Re-inventing art practices : Indigenous women artists building community through art and activism in rural and remote Manitoba

Abstract

This thesis documents and explores community-based and socially engaged art by Indigenous women artists. Their artwork is impacting and strengthening communities in Manitoba. The Thesis explores the use of dialogical aesthetics in performance and socially-engaged art by Indigenous women artists in rural and remote areas of Manitoba, and relates these aesthetics to the concept of activism through their art and relationship to their community. The aim of this research and this paper is to document, support and expose the work of a small pocket of Indigenous women artists in Manitoba who are acting as activists or social change agents based on their artwork. I have arrived at this conclusion first by their personal testimonies, second, by their art being socially conscious and lastly, by their art practices entrenched in the framework of dialogical aesthetics, community-based and site-specific ideologies.