Everyone is invited to join the Aboriginal Gathering Place for the opening of our 30th annual exhibition on Thursday, February 6 at 5pm.
The annual exhibition provides a forum for Aboriginal students to express and celebrate their traditional and/or contemporary art practices. Aboriginal students gain valuable experience by organizing this unique cultural event including work by ECU Indigenous students, staff, faculty, and alumni.
The 2025 exhibition, Beadsoup!, has been curated by Leanne Inuarak-Dall and Rylee Taje.
Curatorial Statement:
Beadsoup! is a constellation of works by Indigenous students, staff, faculty, and alumni of Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Beadsoup is a term used by artists to identify a mixture of beads made up of diverse colours and finishes. Beadsoup can be made on purpose or often comes from a happy accident of beads spilling from their containers. When combined, the varying hues create a new, kaleidoscopic blend with its own nourishing aesthetic qualities. The exhibition, based on this name, engages with how we, as people from different Indigenous nations far and wide, are all sovereign and also in conversation with one another. The work within Beadsoup! is multi-disciplinary, omnitemporal, and proudly Indigenous. Put together in the bead jar that is this exhibition, the artists and their works are a brilliant spectrum of creativity on an individual and collective scale.