News

Cheryl L’Hirondelle: recipient of the Governor General’s Award Visual and Media Arts

May 14, 2021

We would like to extend our warmest congratulations to Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Flaherty Research Scholar 2015) on receiving the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts.

 

Video: Portrait of Cheryl L’Hirondelle – Canada Council for the Arts dir. by Katrina Beatty

Of Cree/Halfbreed and German/Polish ancestry, Cheryl L’Hirondelle is an interdisciplinary, community-engaged artist, a singer/songwriter and a critical thinker whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy wâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) and Kikino Metis Settlement, Alberta. Her work critically investigates and articulates a dynamism of nêhiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place with a practice that incorporates Indigenous language(s), audio, video, virtual reality, the olfactory, sewn objects, music and audience/user participation to create immersive environments towards ‘radical inclusion.’

Cheryl received a James M. Flaherty Research Scholarship in 2015 to conduct research in University College Dublin, investigating “Where songlines and storylines commence/converge”.  Cheryl was also an integral member of the steering group convened by ICUF to organise ‘Landspeak – a gathering of Indigenous and Irish voices’ (more info on Landspeak here).