Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ layers up

All photography by Dennis Ha.

“Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions,” Stevie Nicks sings in the second verse of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” Partially refracting the song’s opening, the line marks a perspective shift from second-person commentary to first-person meditation as Nicks registers relational hurt on a more psychedelic and personal level, weighing possible futures. “I keep my visions to myself,” she continues, “It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams.”

Sung in her ancestral Nēhiyawēwin, a cover of the song features prominently in Mullyanne Nîmito, a new video performance work from Cree Isko artist Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ. Curated by Whess Harman for LeGrande’s solo exhibition of the same name that was on display at Vancouver’s grunt gallery September 17 through October 29, the performance was filmed on location on a beach in Wabasca, Alberta, depicting LeGrande draped in a reflective dance shawl she handcrafted during a Banff residency from ribbon and 3300 aluminum pull tabs, her feet carefully finding their way in the sand in hybrid platform moccasins she also tailored in Banff. While the shawl is inspired by the traditional regalia Indigenous women are required to wear to enter powwow circles, in the video, LeGrande appears alone on the beach, communing instead with the land and the water, the shawl’s access power directed to the dreams that came before her and those she’s yet to unlock. 

Translated by LeGrande’s kokum (grandmother) and mother with production by friend Chandra Melting Tallow, LeGrande says the process of bringing the song cover to life closed some of the distance she sometimes feels from her culture’s traditions, voice and the process of capturing it lending the song its own intimate reflection of interdependencies. Although she doesn’t speak the Nēhiyawēwin language, she makes a persistent effort in her practice to connect to ancestral traditions — to communicate and make perceptible spirit.

“I feel like my work is just an expression of me being here and now as an Indigenous femme,” she tells Long Winter over the phone from her home in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan, (aka Edmonton). “My ancestors — my mom and my kokum and all those before me — have worked and brought me to this place where I feel really lucky to be.”

The handcrafted wearables were also present in the gallery space at grunt — LeGrande’s moccasin platforms displayed atop a light box on a plinth, the shawl draped over a rotating mannequin in the centre of the room, light bouncing off the reflective scales of its pulltabs and giving the installation the magnetic, galvanizing radiance of a disco ball. Supplementary programming brought the audience to Western Front, where LeGrande donned the outfit again for a dance performance, Maskisin ᒪᐢᑭᓯᐣ (“moccasin”). 

LeGrande used the exhibit at grunt to subvert the traditional white cube of the institution, too, patterning syllabics over a pink paintjob.

The written characters used in representing the Nēhiyawēwin language, syllabics feature heavily in LeGrande’s work across media, projected against other works and materials, painted on her face in indigo, her application of the symbols like a language of its own. Also referred to as spirit markers, the symbols reaffirm her culture’s place in the living sphere. 

“It’s important for me to have my language be visible.”

At the same time LeGrande exhibited Mullyanne Nîmito at grunt, she also had a show — Nehiyaw Isko ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ (“Cree Woman”) — on display more locally at SNAP Gallery. Ongoing through November 5, one of the show’s two video installations, Cahkipêhikan, which literally translates to syllabic, also features LeGrande singing, this time to her mosum (grandfather) and kokum. In the video, syllabics are depicted in motion, projected across LeGrande’s body. In the gallery space, the footage is projected across thirty-two wooden syllabics that adorn the walls: layers of communication from different times and places. 

The video components of Cahkipêhikan and the other installation at SNAP, Grieving with the Land, were also on display as part of Mullyanne Nîmito.

“I like to work in layers,” LeGrande explains. “When I think about all of the elements I work in — sound, video, performance — I think when I do an install for a show, I’m really thinking about activating different senses and allowing the audience to enter the work in multiple ways.”

LeGrande’s art is full of echoes, reflections, distortions, and filters, her sculptures, fashion objects, performances, and installations serving a functional role as portals to different times and places, permeating a kind of four-dimensional omnipresence through Cree gesamtkuntswerk.

“I’m thinking through past, but also really expressing it here today,” she says. “In my work I sometimes refer to myself as an alien or a mystical being, and I’m really interested in technology as well, and learning new ways to express myself.”

As part of Long Winter’s Hypercity residency, that journey’s brought LeGrande to experiment with augmented reality, debuting a new AR piece called cahkipêhikan têhtahokana (“syllabic platforms”) when the project launches November 19. Using the Hypercity app, when audiences locate LeGrande’s piece near Dundas Street West and Bloor Street with the camera on their smartphones or tablet devices, they will be able to interact with a virtual sculpture of platform boots LeGrande 3D scanned during her Banff residency. 

For cahkipêhikan têhtahokana, LeGrande’s Cree rendition of “Dreams” also returns, calling from her platforms like a kind of homing device, its signal growing louder and becoming more clarified as users close in. Audiences will also notice syllabics that change colour and move about the boots, elevating functional fashion objects most might take for granted to a new dimension.

“It’s just this idea of taking something from my daily life and transforming it so it feels like another world,” LeGrande explains. An eye on the future at all times, she says the process has already alerted her to new possibilities for her artwork.

“This is all new to me but I can imagine these [platforms] being in a game on a character,” she enthuses. “I’m really interested in learning new ways to communicate.”

Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ debuts cahkipêhikan têhtahokana as a part of Long Winter’s Hypercity programming, running November 2022 through March 2023.