Biskaabiiyang / Returning to Ourselves

Nico Williams, Bingo (detail), 2019, glass beads.
Photo credit: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

“Using the bright, tactile materiality and relational nature of beadwork, my practice looks at the ways we live through connections with objects, place, and language. Often in collaboration and community with others, I make sculptures that are sometimes highly patterned abstracted geometric forms, sometimes sparkling representations of familiar objects, and always hand-woven from hundreds of glass beads.” – Nico Williams

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ is Anishinaabe and member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation community. He is currently working in Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang | Montréal. He has a multidisciplinary, often collaborative practice that is centered around sculptural beadwork.

Williams' work has been shown internationally and across Canada, including at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Musée des beaux-arts Montreal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Victoria Arts Council (British Columbia), PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art (Tiohtiá:ke), La Guilde (Tiohtiá:ke) and his most recent solo exhibition, Chi-Miigwech at Never Apart (Tiohtiá:ke). He has been featured by National Geographic (2018) and CBC (2021) and is housed in prominent public collections including Musee des beaux-arts Montreal, Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Archives Nationales du Québec, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, and the Royal Bank of Canada Art Collection. His first public sculpture, Monument to the Brave, was commissioned in 2020 by the Sick Kids Foundation.