Greg Staats



Horizontal black and white photo of the ground with torn tree roots, dried leaves and pine cones.

FOUND

Archival pigment on cotton paper
2021
27x40”
NFS


Exhibiting in the gallery April 1-14



Statement

"FOUND" references our Hodinöhsö:ni’ responsibility to knowledge and decision-making to the coming generations of faces not yet born that lie beneath the earth. This work and large scale also magnifies my restorative aesthetic and my direct on-reserve lived experience working as a summer student in the late 70's at Canada's first residential school, Some of my family members were forced to attend the Mohawk Institute [1831-1970 ] after it closed and re-opened as the Woodland Cultural and Education Centre. While there I was exposed to knowledge keepers and linguists while learning photography, video and archival management.

"FOUND" also references the connection to the found bodies of children that have been recovered and still lay unfound across this country.


Bio

Greg Staats is Skarù:reˀ[Tuscarora] / Kanien’kehá:ka [Mohawk], Hodinöhsö:ni’. b. 1963, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. A Toronto based artist whose Hodinöhsö:ni restorative aesthetic employs mnemonics of condolence and performative burdens articulated in visual forms that hold body and place including: oral transmission, text works, embodied wampum, photographic, sculpture, installation and video. Staats' practice conceptualizes Land as monument embodied within a continuum of relational placemaking with his on-reserve lived experience, trauma, and the explorations of ceremonial orality. Staats’ lens based language documents cycles of return towards a complete Onkwehón:we neha [our original ways] positionality, reciprocity and worldview.

Greg Staats, active since 1981 studied Applied Photography, Sheridan College, ON is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Solo exhibitions include: articule, Montreal, Kelowna Art Gallery, Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg, MN, Tom Thomson Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, KWAG, Mercer Union, G44, Trinity Square Video/Images Festival. Group exhibitions; AGYU, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Varley Art Gallery of Markham [OAAG award 2019], MOCNA, Sante Fe. Staats served as Faculty for two Aboriginal VA Residencies, Banff Centre: Archive Restored (2009) and Towards Language (2010). Staats’ works are held in public, private and corporate collections. Recent solo exhibitions: Art Gallery of Ontario, CONTACT Photo Festival at Todmorden Mills. [2021] and upcoming Art Gallery of Hamilton, ON (2023), Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (2025). Greg Staats acknowledges the support of: The Ontario Arts Council and The City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council.


Artist Website: sites.google.com/view/gregstaats/home






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