In the words of the artist:
Kitaay Bizhikikwe ndizhinikaaz, waabizheshi ndodem. Anishinaabe miinwa Métis ndow, bezho Mide kwe ndow. My name is Kitaay bizhikikwe, my English name is Amanda Myers. I am of the marten clan, Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge, and of Anishnaabe and Métis lineage connecting to Indigenous communities across northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario (Madelaine Island, Bad River, Sagamok, Garden River, and Walpole Island) My ancestors of the Cadotte/Cadeau and Myers/Mailette lines lived off the land, travelling, trading and trapping, before settling here in SW Ontario. Connection to land and identity is what inspires my visual artwork. When I consider our mother, the earth beneath me, I know that spirit is all around me. I know that when I speak, all of creation is listening. When I have conversations with nature and I consider who I am and who my ancestors were, I can see things out on the landscape, so I paint what I see. My work represents my conversations with the landscape around me and how that looks to me visually.
The painting titled They Know Better, came from a conversation with water activist, Tom Cull. He asked me to collaborate on a performance for the upcoming Culture Days Festival. While we looked out into the downtown of London, Ontario, I could see through the buildings, and I thought of her, Deshkan ziibing (known colonially as the River Thames). He talked about his work with the water, and I talked about my responsibility to the water as Anishinaabekwe. The forks of the river came to my mind and the stories that I knew about it. I considered it now, the commerciality of the space, the concrete, the metal, and the way that people here talk about this beautiful life force. They often comment on how dirty she looks, how polluted she is, instead of telling her that we are grateful for her work, that we love her for what she does for us. Without the movement of this river what would happen? That’s when I could see her, Midewanakwe spirit. She was wondering, what is happening here, why don’t they pay attention to what is around them? If we pay attention, our grandmothers are always here reminding us, that is what I could see in this work, that is what I tried to show.
I often use the technique of overlapping images digitally to create the foundation of my painting, here I overlapped a historic image of the Thames River in London, England, with the current image of the forks in London, Ontario. I wanted to go back to when humans started to interfere with the landscape here. I use many layers of transparency in my work to create the images that I can see in my mind’s eye.
Miigwetch, Kitaay bizhikikwe
Kitaay Bizhikikwe/Amanda Myers website
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