In September 2026, I travelled to Calgary, Alberta, to install Ode to a Prairie at the Nickle Galleries on the University of Calgary’s campus. It was exciting to reinstall this work in the gallery space, which has towering ceilings and large concrete walls. We were able to install the work so that you can walk through what feels like a field of flowers. Many thanks to Jenelle M. Pasiechnik for curating this exhibition, which features work by Glenna Cardinal, seth cardinal dodginghorse and Dwayne Martineau.
This exhibition runs from September 18, 2026 to December 12, 2026.
Held. Together. is a group exhibition featuring Glenna Cardinal, seth cardinal dodginghorse, Dwayne Martineau and Amanda McCavour. Plants provide the curatorial point of departure for Held. Together. From this starting point, the exhibition brings together artists whose practices engage differently with questions of relationship, place and belonging. Attending to the ecological intelligence of grassland species, the exhibition considers reciprocity and care as forces that sustain human and more-than-human life.
Situated where the Foothills Fescue and Foothills Parkland ecosystems meet, Guts-ists’i, Wîchîspa Oyade, Moh’kinstsis provides the ecological context for the exhibition. These grasslands and waters have known, held and sustained the Tsuut’ina, Stoney Nakoda Nations and the Blackfoot Confederacy since time immemorial. Their enduring relationships with these lands and waters continue to shape understandings of place and community.
Beneath the prairie, grasses form intricate networks of roots and relationships that stabilize soil, retain nutrients and create conditions for other forms of life to flourish. Much of this work is unseen, yet it is fundamental to the health and continuity of the ecosystem. Held. Together. draws on this interconnectedness as a way of thinking about community, not as a collection of separate individuals, but as something continually made and sustained through relationships.
The artists approach these questions through distinct materials and forms of attention. Amanda McCavour’s textile installations carefully observe and materially reimagine plants. Through Dwayne Martineau’s looping video, sustained encounters with land and water become an exercise in close looking and a meditation on the sublimity of nature. Glenna Cardinal’s familial images embedded on Pendleton blankets carry stories of kinship, displacement and belonging, while seth cardinal dodginghorse’s depiction of their lost home on hide speaks to family, place and displacement from traditional lands. Together, the works offer different ways of attending to how relationships shape our experience of place and one another.
The plants within Held. Together. function as a way of noticing: drawing attention to relationships that can be overlooked and to the forms of connection and care through which life is sustained. This framework allows the artists’ distinct practices to enter into conversation, where each work offers a different way of considering what it means to be held in relation to land, family and community.
Held. Together. honours the enduring relationships Indigenous Peoples have maintained with these grasslands and waters since time immemorial, while inviting those of us who have settled here to consider how we are situated within these living ecosystems and what responsibilities arise from that relationship.
- Glenna Cardinal (Saddle Lake Cree Nation member/Tsuut’ina Nation)
- seth cardinal dodginghorse (Tsuut’ina, Amskapi Pikanii and Saddle Lake Cree)
- Dwayne Martineau (Frog Lake First Nation, descended from a complex frontier mix of early French, Scottish and Irish settlers, Plains Cree, Métis and Iroquois)
- Amanda McCavour (Toronto-based settler artist)
With contributions from Holly Anghel in the Window Gallery. Curated by Jenelle M. Pasiechnik.
