Festival Art Souterrain

Kanien’keháka artist Skawennati’s world-building practice bridges ancient narratives, pop culture, and science fiction. In The Story So Far, Skawennati imagines new narratives for some of this territory’s oldest characters. The Three Sisters, beloved personifications of corn, beans, and squash, emerge as powerful, more-than-human protagonists whose story of resilience reflects the urgency of our era.

Through a dynamic blend of digital imagery and hand-made garments, the exhibition traces the trio’s epic journey from pre-contact times to five minutes into the future. Along the way, they resist war, colonization, corporate greed, and ecological collapse.

Skawennati first introduced the Three Sisters as superheroes in 2022 in her video Words Before All Else. In 2023, she created the installation Three Sisters: Reclaiming Abundance, depicting them as guardians of a mixed-reality garden. In They Sustain Us (2024), she told the story of how they became superheroes, followed in 2025 by the Augmented Reality (AR) artwork They Said Get Ready in which they continue their mission to widely disseminate their message of sustainability and food sovereignty.

The Three Sisters have been presented at major international institutions, including the mixed-reality performance, They Sustain Us, at Grey Area (San Francisco); the solo exhibition, Welcome to the Dreamhouse, at the National Gallery of Canada; and Amplifier’s guerilla exhibition Encoded, where they occupied the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). In June Skawennati will produce a temporary public artwork featuring the Three Sisters for the 70th anniversary of the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Skawennati makes art across a variety of media. Her digital imagery, textiles and fashion art have been presented and collected internationally. Awarded a Meritorious Service Medal in 2025, she also holds an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Skawennati is a founding board member of daphne, an Indigenous artist-run centre and also sits on the board of Rhizome, an international new media hub. She co-founded and co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation studio-lab at Concordia University. Originally from Kahnawà:ke, Skawennati resides in Montreal.