Susan Blight is an

Anishinaabe The Anishinaabe (alternatively spelled Anishinabe, Anicinape, Nishnaabe, Neshnabé, Anishinaabeg, Anishinabek, Aanishnaabe) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region of C ...

visual artist, filmmaker, and arts educator from

Couchiching First Nation The Couchiching First Nation () is a Saulteaux First Nation band government in the Canadian province of Ontario, who live on the Couchiching 16A and Agency 1 reserves in the Rainy River District near Fort Frances. History Ancestors of the Co ...

. Her work, especially her public art throughout the city of

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, often explores themes of "personal and cultural identity and its relationship to space". In 2016, the City of Toronto placed several street signs with Anishinaabe names throughout a neighborhood as a response to the Ogimaa Mikana Project co-founded by Blight.

Education

Blight holds a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admi ...

in Integrated Media from the

University of Windsor The University of Windsor (UWindsor, U of W, or UWin) is a public university, public research university in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's southernmost university. It has approximately 17,500 students. The university was incorporated by ...

, and a

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students pursuing a professional education in the visual arts, Fine art, or performing arts. In some instances, it is also called a Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA). Background ...

Photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in

Film studies Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various film theory, theoretical, history of film, historical, and film criticism, critical approaches to film, cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media stud ...

from the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a public research university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1877, it is the first university of Western Canada. Both by total student enrolment and campus area, the University of ...

. She is currently a PhD candidate in Social Justice Education at the

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) is Canada's only all-graduate institute of teaching, learning and research. It is located at 252 Bloor Street West on the university's St. George campus in ...

Career

Blight's interdisciplinary work includes projects that combine

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

and

culture, language, and history. In 2008, Susan Blight was featured in a group photograph exhibition at the Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. During the early 2010s, Blight co-hosted a radio show, ''Indigenous Waves''. In 2013, Blight and colleague Hayden King co-founded the Ogimaa Mikana Project, an artist collective that reclaims Indigenous place names for

's streets by posting billboards with Anishinaabemowin phrases around the city and pasting stickers with Anishinaabemowin names on street signs. She described one billboard in

Parkdale, Toronto Parkdale is a neighbourhood and former village in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, west of Downtown Toronto, downtown. The neighbourhood is bounded on the west by Roncesvalles Avenue; on the north by the Canadian Pacific Railway, CP Rail line where it c ...

, as "reminding people of the 15,000 year ndigenoushistory here in Toronto and to affirm our relationship to our language, which is part of our spiritual presence, our political presence, our governance, our health..." in response to the neighborhood's rapid gentrification and loss of its indigenous inhabitants. Three years later, the City of Toronto and a local business group collaborated with Ogimaa Mikana to place several official Anishinaabe street signs at the north end of

The Annex The Annex is a neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The traditional boundaries of the neighbourhood extend north to Dupont Street, south to Bloor Street, west to Bathurst Street (Toronto), Bathurst Street and east to Avenue Road, ...

neighborhood, with Blight and King as advisers. In 2018, Ogimaa Mikana participated in the exhibition ''Soundings: An exhibition in Five Parts'' curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson. They created an outdoor public installation entitled ''Never Stuck'', a vinyl transfer installed on Mackintosh-Corry Hall at Queen's University main campus.

References

External links

ImagineNATIVE 2011 Lift MenteeSusan Blight: Guided by Streams

Big Ideas in Art and Culture: Susan Blight
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blight, Susan Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Windsor alumni University of Manitoba alumni 21st-century Canadian women artists Artists from Ontario Ojibwe women artists Ojibwe artists 21st-century First Nations artists 21st-century First Nations women Couchiching First Nation people