Greg Staats is Skarù:reˀ [Tuscarora], Hodinöhsö:ni’ and a lens-based visual artist. Greg is a founding member of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers' Association (NIIPA). He was awarded the 1999 Duke & Duchess of York Prize in Photography from the Canada Council for the Arts and, recently, the 2021 Toronto Arts Foundation’s Inaugural Indigenous Artist Award. Greg has had 17 solo national, regional and artist-run exhibitions, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Gallery 44 and the McMaster Museum of Art, as well as 16 group exhibitions, including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, in Sante Fe, USA, Mercer Union and the International Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. He has lectured extensively nationally, and his works are held within public, private and corporate collections. Greg has served as faculty for two Aboriginal Visual Arts Residencies at the Banff Centre. Greg Staats grew up on Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Ohsweken, and has resided in Toronto, Ontario, since 1986.
“Greg works in photography, video, and installation. All his work comes from his being Mohawk. In a long, continuous, deeply felt pursuit, Greg has attempted to recover Hodinöhsö:ni’ methodologies as ways of enabling his practice […] His landscape images, in black-and-white and colour, are stunningly beautiful, but not neutral, as they have symbolic import: such as images of the white pine, an ancient symbol of the unity of the Hodinöhsö:ni’ Confederacy. For Greg, the landscape is a resonant archive disclosing a symbolic universe for those who have eyes to see clearly.”
Nominators: Emelie Chhangur (Agnes Etherington Art Centre), Richard Hill and Philip Monk
See the artist’s works that are part of the Canada Council Art Bank collection.
“For Greg, the landscape is a resonant archive disclosing a symbolic universe[.]”
Selected works
Greg Staats, Melinda Frohman, 1982, toned silver print, 27.94 x 35.56 cm.
Photo credit: Greg Staats
Greg Staats, Requickening Address: relieve the twisting within the body, 1993, toned silver print, wampum, acrylic, deerskin on Davey board, 31.12 x 42.55 cm.
National Gallery of Canada, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Bank of Nova Scotia Collection, Department of Foreign Affairs.
Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid
Greg Staats, Requickening Address, 1993, 15 toned silver prints, wampum, acrylic, deerskin on Davey board, 31.12 x 42.55 cm each.
National Gallery of Canada, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Bank of Nova Scotia Collection, Department of Foreign Affairs.
Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid
Greg Staats, Marjorie Noganosh, 1996, toned silver print, 115.89 x 95.89 cm.
Photo credit: Greg Staats
Greg Staats, untitled (objects from reciprocal thinking), 2014, Davey board, handmade white wampum, gouache on great-grandfather’s 100-year-old flooring paper, 30-centimetre handmade purple wampum string, canvas bag from family archive, and archival World War II photograph, 7.01 x 2.44 m.
Photo credit: Varley Art Gallery
Greg Staats, what did you see along the road of transformation, 2019, digital adhesive print, 152.4 x 218.44 cm.
Photo credit: Greg Staats
Greg Staats, Do’-gah – I don’t know [shrugging shoulders] – edition of 3 and performative event score, 2020, archival canvas matte print, oil, earth and Indian tobacco ash, edition 1 of 3, 142.24 x 177.8 cm.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Indigenous Art Collection, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
Photo credit: Rachel Topham Photography
Greg Staats, It dropped down their minds / for at least one day you should continue to breathe calmly, 2021, exterior building 7 adhesive photo installation, variable dimensions.
Commissioned by CONTACT Photography Festival. Historical Heritage Projects. Todmorden Mills, Toronto, Ontario.
Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid
Greg Staats, untitled [1969], 2021, nine archival pigment prints on cotton fibre paper, 76.2 x 101.6 – 101.6 x 132.08 cm.
Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Ontario).
Photo credit: Greg Staats
Greg Staats, untitled [1969], promises, 2021, archival pigment print on cotton fibre paper, 88.9 x 101.6 cm.
Photo credit: Greg Staats
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