GUIDED TOUR

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ (b. 1989), is a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation (Anishinaabe) and currently lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. In 2021, he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Concordia University. He has a multidisciplinary and often collaborative practice that is centred around sculptural beadwork. Williams is active within the urban Indigenous Montréal arts community and is a member of the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team. He has led workshops at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the McCord Stewart Museum, MOMA x AICH, and the University of Toronto. In 2021, he was awarded the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, and in 2024, he was the laureate of the prestigious Sobey Art Award, for which he was longlisted in 2022. His work has been shown internationally and across Canada, including at the National Gallery of Canada (2024), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (2023), the MacKenzie Art Gallery (2022), the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2021), and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (2019). He was part of the critically-lauded group exhibition Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 at the Hessel Museum of Art. Williams’s works are housed in prominent public collections, including the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Archives Nationales du Québec, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, and the Royal Bank of Canada Art Collection. His work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Fluevog Artist Grant.

Born in 1992 in Ottawa, Samwell Guertin is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Montréal. His practice centers on glass sculpture and beadwork, exploring material and symbolic possibilities through form, pattern, and process. After moving to Montréal in 2011 to study fashion design, Guertin began incorporating beadwork into his creative practice—a medium that has since become central to his artistic identity. In 2023, he graduated from the glass arts program at Cégep du Vieux Montréal, expanding his sculptural vocabulary through kiln-forming, glassblowing, and neon. For over a decade, he has worked as head technician for Anishinaabe artist Nico Williams, supporting the production of artworks and large-scale installations. In 2025, Guertin held his first solo exhibition, Quanta+phi, at the Maison de la Culture Villeray, featuring works in glass and beadwork that explore the convergence of scientific structure and poetic materiality.

Ioana Dragomir is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Montréal. Her practice brings together writing, drawing, found imagery, and installation, with a focus on poetic methodologies such as juxtaposition, metaphor, and slippage. She holds an MA in Art History and Curatorial Studies from Western University and completed her MFA at Concordia University, where her research on anti-capitalist desire was supported by SSHRC. Her work has been exhibited at Support, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Centre Clark, and The Plumb, among others. Her creative and critical interests are shaped by a deep engagement with literature and feminist poetics, particularly the works of Sappho, Anne Carson, and Virginia Woolf.

Christy Kunitzky is a multidisciplinary artist and weaver working primarily in sculpture and installation. She holds a BFA from OCAD University and an MFA from Concordia University. Her work has been presented at venues including The Plumb (Toronto), Art Metropole (Toronto), the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montréal), Family (Montréal), and as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Kunitzky has participated in residencies at the University of Windsor and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she received the Colleen Anderson Millard Endowment for Emerging Artists. Her practice explores materiality, time, and repetition through tactile processes and textile-based forms.

Caroline Moiny is a Montréal-based artist whose practice explores craftsmanship, materiality, and the intersection of traditional techniques with contemporary expression. She completed a DEC in Arts Plastiques at Cégep Édouard-Montpetit and a second DEC in commercial photography, working professionally in the field before returning to hands-on artistic making. She later studied jewelry at the École de métiers d’art de Montréal, specializing in silver and traditional metalsmithing techniques. Her artistic path shifted after meeting Nico Williams, whose beadwork practice inspired her to take up the medium. Over the past two years, Moiny has worked in Williams’ studio, where she continues to refine her beadwork skills and develop a nuanced visual language grounded in tactile experimentation and cultural dialogue.

Laurel Rennie is an artist working with textiles, sculpture, drawing, and writing. Her work engages the sensory and symbolic textures of material culture to explore interspecies relationships and embodied ecologies. Born in Windsor, Ontario, and now based in Montréal, she holds a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from NSCAD University and an MFA in Fibres and Material Practices from Concordia University. Recent exhibitions include Entre les craques du trottoir, McBride Contemporain (Montréal, 2025); Traces Coiled and Twined, FOFA Gallery (Montréal, 2024); Also a Good Place to Sulk, Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto, 2024); Ignition 17, Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montréal, 2022); and Object Histories, Eyelevel Gallery (Halifax, 2020).

Emlyne started beading at the age of five years old with her mother, a teacher who used to own a bead store. While she is not Indigenous herself, Emlyne has memories of beading in a circle on the floor of the store with Inuit women, teaching and learning from each other. Beadweaving is a practice she has done for her whole life; one she didn't take seriously at first, as she understands it to be something so easy and accessible for anyone. She used beadwork a few times for projects during her Fine Arts studies at Dawson College. One day, eavesdropping on a conversation friends were having, she overheard that Nico Williams had a studio in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and was looking for people for his team. She has been working with Williams for over two years now and it truly feels like the start of something great.