03/31/2026
✨EXHIBITION EXTENDED TO MAY 1ST!✨
we tend to care | Nikisisawéniténán
Onókohtáw Carrie Allison
Curated by / Okanawénihcikéw Franchesca Hebert-Spence
Grass exists firmly within the mundane. Yet, it has such an emotional hold within our imagination. For example, the weekend whine of lawnmowers in the distance correlates to a middle-class aspiration. There are candles and air fresheners that mimic a “fresh cut grass” scent, signalling cleanliness. Allison’s ambitious beaded pieces parallel the absurd amount of labour and time that goes into maintaining yards, lawns, gardens, and agricultural spaces.
In doing so, Allison’s work confronts these social constructs and addresses how these spaces uphold and are upheld by class, colonialism, and nationalism. She takes this critique to the absurd with her use of digital media to extrapolate what those systems will evolve into if left unchecked.
Allison offers alternatives to those futures by tracing riverways in beads, replacing cold extractive botanical sketches with portrayals of kin, or looking for shared intergenerational spaces.
Through these portraits, visiting, and memory, we tend to care considers the connections Allison has to place – Grande Prairie being her maternal family’s territory, and demonstrates how she cares and nurtures those bonds.
Within the juxtaposition of family, land, space, and colonial critique, Allison poses the question: where are we putting our labour and for whose benefit?
