Photo Credit: Angeline Simon
Lauren Crazybull is a Niitsitapi, Dené painter living and working in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). Lauren won the 2020 Eldon & Anne Foote prize, 2020 Lieutenant Governors Emerging Artist Award and was shortlisted for the Kingston Portrait Prize in 2019. In 2019, they were selected as the inaugural Artist in Residence for Alberta. Through the work they do, Lauren understands that their creative power is a poignant way to assert their own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous people.
Lauren Crazybull, Conor, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 72”x 84”. Courtesy of the Artist. Installation view of The Scene, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, 2021. Photo: Art Gallery of Alberta.
In their work, Crazybull interrogates how Indigenous identities have been historically represented and understood through visual culture. Working primarily in portraiture, a long-standing genre that is often embedded with an imbalance of power between the artist/viewer and sitter, Crazybull seeks to examine the relationship between themself as artist and the individuals they paint. Crazybull uses art as a way to assert their own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous peoples.
The Artist would like to acknowledge the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in the making of these works.
