Jaimie Isaac

Jaimie Isaac (she/her/hers) is a curator and interdisciplinary artist, Anishinaabe member of Sagkeeng First Nation and is of British heritage. She was the Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria from 2021-2023, and advisor 2023-2024.

As the Curator of Contemporary and Indigenous Arts at the Winnipeg Art Gallery 2015-2021, she was awarded the Canadian Museums Association outstanding achievement award in exhibitions category with the Boarder X exhibition. Isaac has a degree in Art History and a Masters of Arts from the University of British Columbia focused on decolonizing gallery/museum practices.

Through academic, curatorial, consulting/advisory, collaborative and artistic projects, Jaimie engages in areas of reconciliation, resistance, decolonization in art and in sport, Indigenous feminism, environmental justice, language and cultural resurgence. Isaac has lectured, curated internationally with research trips and residencies in Norway, Finland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Chicago, and New York. Bodies of art commissioned and exhibited take form in film, public art, installation and mixed media. With published work, Isaac has contributed to scholarly collections of writing within textbooks and journals.

On the Just Waters project:

My background with this project is multifaceted, Working with light, sound, mixed media, archives, cultural materials and interactivity are within my art practice, as well as working in large scale projects in public art. My solo show, Brings to Light at Gallery 1c03 in 2022/23 and commissioned through several projects allowed me to produce large scale works in sound, film, and mixed mediums. I explored projection, and cast light as a way to tell a story and bring to light dark histories, as well as instigate intercultural and intergenerational exchange from a lens of learning and experimentation in movement and material. I explore materials with coded histories and create visual literacies. The artistic goal for the residency at University of Manitoba is to work with existing film footage, collecting audio and create moving images for projection and sound production, as well as screen print film still images on nautical cloth that capture various shapes and forms of water and waterways.

Embedded in Indigenous worldviews, water is sacred, the waterways are like mother earth’s veins, the lifeblood of our existence; sustaining and nurturing life. Envisioning a future for the earth’s waterways as a person has compelled me to personify water, give it shape and cast it as a character. Nibi in Anishinaabe/Ojibwe translates to water. Conceiving waterways as carrying a legal status of personhood gives sacred waterways rights, thus any actions and violations against them is a human rights issue. Given their deep spiritual and social connection to communities, what could this mean for it’s future and everyone that depends on them? This project speaks to water sovereignty, water protection and rights. Interactivity and community engagement through lectures and dialogue is important to envision a collectivity to reflect on water ways.