NIIPA 20/20 – McMaster Museum of Art exhibition

NIIPA 20/20
Curated by Rhéanne Chartrand
May 27 – September 3, 2022

NIIPA 20/20 presents over 160 photographic works by fifty alumni photographers of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association (NIIPA).

Created between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and sourced from NIIPA’s permanent collection and past exhibitions, the photographs in NIIPA 20/20 visualize the diverse interests and concerns of the alumni photographers and promote a positive, realistic, and contemporary image of Indigenous life on Turtle Island.

NIIPA 20/20 celebrates the individual and collective artistic achievements of the alumni photographers, and the dedicated staff that supported the presentation of their photographic works over the span of NIIPA’s 20-year history.

This exhibition is the culmination of a five-year archival research project shining light on the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association, an Indigenous arts service organization founded in Hamilton in 1985, which played a critical role in advocating for, supporting and building up a community of emerging and established Indigenous photographers in Canada and the United States.