'My art is for my people:' Haudenosaunee artist aims to paint the joy of her community on her own terms
CBC
Shayde Sandy's art is about her community, not "healing the world."
As a Haudenosaunee artist, she said she gets asked about reconciliation and the role her art plays in it, but she says it "isn't about that."
"My art is for my people," she told CBC Hamilton.
"I'm not trying to solve anything."
Sandy, 24, is a multidisciplinary artist from Six Nations of the Grand River. Her art is now travelling through the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area as a bus wrap, part of transit company Metrolinx's commemoration of National Indigenous History Month.
The piece, called Intergenerational Love, was a four-by-five-foot oil painting made in 2022.
Sandy wanted to change the negative contexts that can come with the word "intergenerational." Her grandfather, her cousin and brother were all immortalized in the painting during a "candid moment."
"[I wanted] to show that there's happy moments in our life, and it's not so serious all the time," she said.
Her bus wrap piece — which will be featured on the side of a GO bus for at least a year, according to Metrolinx — shows a joyful family surrounded by a Woodlands-style background, symbolizing community and connection.
Encouraged by her grandmother from a young age, Sandy grew up surrounded by artists — her father, a soapstone carver, and her cousin, a muralist.
Sandy said she always had a "fascination with people" and would draw her family a lot.
It wasn't until attending Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., however, that she began to fully appreciate her Haudenosaunee culture. Inspired by Cree artist Kent Monkman, she started portraying her own community.
WATCH | Kent Monkman on changing the conversation about what's in museums:
Sandy does portrait commissions now, and though requests are open for anyone, she's found herself painting mostly other members of her community in Six Nations in southern Ontario.
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