Opening September 11
From 5 to 8 PM
Artist in attendance

McBride Contemporain is pleased to present kiyânaw, Bea Parsons’ third solo exhibition at the gallery. Featuring vibrant colour pencil drawings, floor-to-ceiling wooden block towers, and a large-scale floor installation, the exhibition expands her practice beyond the two-dimensional form to unsettle colonial power structures and knowledge systems while asserting awareness, urgency, and collective action.

Following Parsons’ previous exhibitions, peyak (nêhiyawêwin/Plains Cree term for “one,” 2020) and niso (“two,” 2022), which focused on monotype prints, kiyânaw marks the next chapter in her evolving practice. Translating to “us” in a way that embraces “all of us,” the exhibition centers on togetherness and engages directly with themes of interconnected acts of global Indigenous solidarities.

Parsons’ expressive drawings depict figures linking arms, tracing connections between earth and sky. Ribbons weave through the compositions, while circular motifs and curving grids convey a balance of rootedness and motion, forming a personal lexicon of remembrance and cultural resurgence. Informed by her experiences as an educator, student, and knowledge mobilizer, these works draw on collective acts of uprising and ceremony that challenge colonial histories while affirming community strength.

The exhibition’s spatial elements extend the act of looking upward and downward. Four modular towers of stacked wooden blocks suggest education, childhood learning, and the possibility of restructuring. Assembled piece by piece they echo the precariousness of ivory towers. A multi-tonal green tower evokes turtles stacking on one another and alludes to the Mohawk creation story of Turtle Island.

Referencing Phyllis Webstad’s story, the legacy of Orange Shirt Day, and the impacts of the Canadian Residential School System, the platform shifts how viewers move through the space while prompting reflection on what lies beneath. As the daughter of a day school survivor, Parsons situates her practice within an intergenerational continuum of remembrance, resistance, and rebuilding.

–  Text by Hanss Lujan Torres

Bea Parsons (b.1981, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) is a printmaker and drawer based in Tiohtià:ke Montreal. She earned a BFA in Art Education (2008) and a BFA in Painting and Drawing (2010) from Concordia University, as well as an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University (2012). She is a current full time professor at Concordia University, Montreal. Parsons has previously taught at The University of Texas, Austin and The University of California, Davis. She has had a number of solo exhibitions, namely at Franz Kaka in Toronto and Tappeto Volante in New York City. Her works have been acquired by the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée d’art de Joliette, Hydro-Québec, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and Equit