Mtis artist's Winnipeg Art Gallery exhibit goes back 250 years to honour women in her family

What does 250 years of family history look like?

For oneManitoba Mtis artist, it looks like250 handmade, fire-smoked bowls.

Tracy Charette Fehr traced thehistory ofsevengenerations of women in her familygrandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters and cousins back to 1770and is recognizing those women with a new exhibit atthe Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq.

"I was exploring the female side of my mother's Mtis lineage. So it represents a first grandmother, Madeline Saulteaux, who was born in 1770, and then up to 2020," Fehr said in an interview with CBC Radio'sUp to Speed.

The bowls she made, over a two-year research and crafting period, are part of the new WAG exhibitHeartbeat of a Nation: Mtis Women, 250 Years.

Fehr says her goal for the project was to draw attentionto Mtis women, whom she sayshelped birth the Mtis nation in Manitoba.

"Not to minimize anythingLouis Riel was a great leader but there was so much more," she said.

"We don't hear a lot about the women, you know, who worked alongside the Mtis men.I wanted the regular women to be recognized all of those people who carried the culture, you know, and maintained the culture."

Fehr says even with pressures of assimilation, the Mtis have survived.

"We can give credit to the mothersand the grandmothersand aunties for making that happen."

'Each one has its own essence'

The bowls havea special significance, Fehr says, because women are known as the carriers of water.

"For the past few years, I was making bowls and giving them away. Some people could use them as a smudge bowl or if somebody wanted to hang onto it and have it represent a significant woman in their life," she said.

"To me, the bowl represents the holding of lifeand potential, and to me that's a sacred kind of thing. So the bowls kind of represent the sacredness of that female lineage as well. Each one also represents the individual Mtis women, multitudes of them."

When she makes a bowl and holds it,it's an embodiment, a presence or essence of something, Fehr said.

"Each one becomes reallysignificant to me, andhard to let go of, actually," she said with a laugh.

The process of making a bowl isa very tactile experience, she added.

"There's the forming of the bowl. I do a fair amount of carving, so a lot of them are hand-carved on the interior. I've done floral designs in a lot of them, to represent the Mtis people that were at one time known as the flower beadwork people," Fehr says.

After a couple of firing processes, and partial glazing in some cases, she puts them through fire, exposed to the smoke, creatingunique surfaces.

Although there are some similarities, each bowl is different, she says.

"Each one has its own essence. Kind of its own personality. They're different sizes, different colours, different textures. Some of them are completely white and some are completely black."

After the exhibit, Fehr plans to give away each bowl to a Manitoba Mtis woman to use. She will also ask them to name another Mtis woman, whose names she plans to use in another art project to recognize another 250 Mtis women.

The exhibit will be displayed nearone of the "bridges" that linkthe original Winnipeg Art Gallery building toQaumajuq, the recently opened Inuit art centre. WhenQaumajuqand other WAG spaces were given names by Indigenous language keepers, the bridges were namedNakishkamohk meaning "connection" in theMtislanguage Michif, a gallery spokesperson told CBC.

The exhibit opensAug. 20with an outdoor celebration and "Mtis fiddle jam" on the Winnipeg Art Gallery rooftop from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., featuringManitoban female fiddlers Tayler Fleming and Melissa St. Goddard.

Fehr's exhibit runs at the gallery until Nov. 6.