Marianne Nicolson, The House of the Ghosts, Site-specific light projection with banner on the exterior of the Vancouver Art Gallery, October 4, 2008 to January 11, 2009
Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

Marianne Nicolson - Musgamakw Dzawada’enux First Nation, Kwakwaka’wakw/Canada

Nicolson presents her work as a guest to the great lakes woodlands region of Toronto outside of her ancestral territory as Kwakwaka’wakw on the west coast. Her animated projection on the Old City Hall clock tower manifests ghost stories from the dead of night, recalling the supernatural spirit world while addressing the institutional haunting of the building as a structure and symbol of the nation state and Toronto's history. She overwrites the Romanesque civic building and courthouse using animated projections of hand-drawn pictographs based in Indigenous oral traditions and languages. Nicolson builds on her investigations into the ongoing tension and unresolved history of dispossession between Indigenous and non-indigenous governance, colonial power and buildings as permanent markers on land and bodies. Previous projects include The House of the Ghosts, Vancouver Art Gallery (2008) and There's Blood in the Rocks, Legacy Gallery Victoria (2016).

Marianne Nicolson ‘Tayagila’ogwa is Scottish-Canadian and Musgamakw Dzawada̱’enux̱ from the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Her work lives at the intersections of cultural revitalization, language, sustainability and Indigenous histories and politics. Nicolson studied traditional Kwakwaka’wakw intelligence and artforms including Western European-based art practices. She exhibits extensively and holds a PhD in Linguistics, Anthropology and Art History from the University of Victoria.