Sovereign Stitches + Wild Weaves LIVE: Runway

Catherine Blackburn was born in Patuanak, Saskatchewan, and is a member of the English River First Nation (Denesųłiné). She is a multidisciplinary artist and jeweller whose narrative work often addresses Canada’s settler colonialism. Her work grounds itself in the Indigenous feminine and is bound by the ancestral love carried through stitching. Through stitchwork, she explores Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, and representation. Her work has been exhibited in notable national and international exhibitions including Radical Stitch and Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada, the Santa Fe Haute Couture Fashion Show, Indigenous Fashion Arts, and Making Kin at the Humboldt Forum, Berlin. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Sobey Art Award longlist (2019 and 2023), a Forge Residency Fellowship (2022), and an Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship (2021).

Lillardia Briggs-Houston is a Wiradjuri, Gangulu, and Yorta Yorta fashion and textile designer based in Albury, inspired by her grandmother’s fashion training. Since founding her label in 2019, she has become a prominent First Nations voice, presenting at Australian Fashion Week and Melbourne Fashion Festival, winning three National Indigenous Fashion Awards, and having work acquired by the Powerhouse Museum.

Michel Dumont is a queer, Métis, Two-Spirit, disabled artist based in Thunder Bay who creates mosaic works from discarded vintage tile, wearable art from packing tape and LEDs, and installations exploring anti-colonial urban Indigenous and queer identities. A trauma survivor, he was named Thunder Bay Visual Artist of the Year (2018) and has held residencies at the Banff Centre, Leslie-Lohman Museum, and Allan Gardens.

Lesley Hampton is an Anishinaabe artist and fashion designer focused on mental wellness and body neutrality in fashion through an Indigenous worldview. Lesley is a member of Temagami First Nation. She identifies as an adult “Third Culture Kid,” with her formative years spent in Canada’s Arctic and Atlantic regions, Australia, England, Indonesia, and New Caledonia. This amalgamation of her Anishinaabe indigeneity and international upbringing nurtured her passion for socio-cultural causes, using her work as a catalyst for research, conversation, and community building.

Justin Louis, co-founder of Vancouver’s SECTION 35, is a Nehiyaw fashion designer and photographer known for subversive streetwear designs that blend history and modernity. Since 2013, SECTION 35 has been a platform for storytelling through fashion, collaborating with artists like Santiago X and OxDX.

Dr. Bobby Luke is a Māori transdisciplinary designer, filmmaker, and fashion designer grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural resurgence through design. His PhD, Kākahu Hou: Breath of Cloth, explores Māori narratives, textile design, and Indigenous epistemologies. Featured in Vogue Vanguard and highly commended for the Kingitanga Prize, he champions Indigenous-led innovation.

Ema Lyon (Ngāti Porou, Scottish, English) is a fibre artist, weaver, activator, writer, product designer, business owner, and Mama of three incredible tamariki. As takatāpui, Ema’s work challenges the gender binary and explores Indigenous concepts of fluidity within gender and sexuality. Ema began her weaving journey under the guidance of Kahutoi Te Kanawa and was blessed to be mentored in her early years as a weaver by both Diggeress Te Kanawa and Christina Wirihana. As kairaranga and kaiwhatu, Ema connects with her tīpuna, bringing forth stories of her ancestors and challenging us to experience fibre works through a diverse lens.

Rosanna Raymond is a notable producer of and commentator on contemporary Moana culture in Aotearoa New Zealand, the U.K., Australia and the USA. A long-standing member of the art collective the Pacific Sisters and a founding member of the SaVĀge K’lub, her body centered practices include working within museums and higher education institutions as a researcher, curator, artist, performer, guest speaker, poet, and workshop leader. Raymond was awarded the CNZ Pacific Senior Artist for 2018 and this year was invested as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit acknowledging her contribution to the arts. A former Chester Dale Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum she now holds a Master of Philosophy with Honours from Auckland University of Technology.bio

Suzanne Tamaki (Ngāti Maniapoto, Tūhoe) is an artist and social provocateur working across fashion, photography, and moving image. Her practice critiques the colonial gaze and Western ideas of nationhood, exploring Indigenous feminisms in Aotearoa. A member of Pacific Sisters and SaVĀge K’lub, she received the inaugural Kiingi Tuheitia Portrait Award.

Maggie Thompson (Ojibwe) is a Minneapolis-based multimedia artist whose textile-based practice explores loss, grief, and love through natural and synthetic materials. Her work has been shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Renwick Gallery, and IAIA MoCNA, and is held in collections including the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Thompson holds a BFA from RISD, curates, and owns Makwa Studio.