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By Nic Wilson

"Fazakas is the pre-eminent Indigenous contemporary art gallery in Canada," Higgs said, noting the growing attention at American museums on Native artists in the last five years. "Trying to identify the Fazakases of the world - galleries that are doing really prescient, necessary work, and then helping them to amplify that work to new audiences - we feel is critical to our claiming to be 'independent.'"

As part of a special 15th anniversary edition of the invitation-only Independent Art Fair in New York, East Vancouver's own Fazakas Gallery will be exhibiting the work of Chief Beau Dick, a celebrated Kwakwaka'wakw artist and activist who died in 2017.

Andrew Kreps Gallery (andrewkreps.com)

22 Cortlandt Alley, Tribeca, Manhattan
Through May 11

In a new series by Marcy Friesen, who resides in rural Saskatchewan, audio recordings and poems combine with her witty compositions in a kind of incantation that invites the observer into a warm realm of subconscious symbology. Using the practical tools of her everyday trade-beads and fur-Friesen describes her art as "useless", knowing full well that it only strengthens the beauty and the appeal.

In the new solo show Rooted Synergy Exploring Radical Indigenous Love, on now at Vancouver's Fazakas Gallery until Jan. 20, Cree-Métis visual artist Jason Baerg continues to explore 'material experimentation on abstraction, the interplay of forms, and Indigenous futuristic symbols.'

At a time when so much of the world feels divisive, Métis artist and activist Jason Baerg is creating a safe space for healing through his work.

"The title of the exhibition being the Cree word for “I, me, mine,” Friesen reflects on her upbringing and family history, using her beadwork – and humour – to transform everyday objects and blur the barriers between art and artist."

"The tome highlights the remarkable diversity of media and cultural influences across the continent, from fashion artist Jamie Okuma’s intricately beaded designer boots to Dana Claxton’s elaborate Headdress portrait series to Northwest Coast artist and Chief Beau Dick’s expressive masks."

"Hopkins selected solo and two-person exhibits to explore hidden histories and the malleability of history. “The artists in the Focus section use materials to manifest histories—whether sedimented or surfaced, place-based or familial, learned or reclaimed—and to conjure specific futures,” Hopkins wrote in her curatorial statement."

"Ontario-based Inuk artist Couzyn Van Heuvelen exhibited some of his foil balloon pieces, inspired by the Inuit seal-skin floats used to hunt marine animals. These works are typically filled with helium, but the fair prohibited it, worried that the artworks would drift up into the convention center’s impossibly high ceilings, thousands of dollars lost forever. 'They told us: ‘Pop them or get out,' said Fazakas Gallery owner LaTiesha Fazakas. 'So we blew them up ourselves using straws.'"

"The Center for Curatorial Studies’ Hessel Museum of Art presents the first major exhibition to center performance as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists. Curated by leading scholar and curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 traces the history of experimentation that emerged in the late 1960s and continues to inform the practice of Native artists today."

"Van Heuvelen is an Inuit artist who was born in Iqaluit and now lives in southern Ontario, and this powerful sculpture combines a keen sense of contemporary art with a respectful homage to the traditions of Inuit carving. Displayed on a series of sharp-edged white forms that evoke shards of ice, the sled seems trapped in a melting ice field, graphically reflecting the effects of climate change on traditional hunting grounds."