Emily Carr University Aboriginal Gathering Place

Somewhere We Have Travelled brought together generations of Indigenous artists connected to Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Presented during ECU’s centennial year, the exhibition featured 59 Indigenous alumni alongside current students, faculty & staff, representing artists from 34 communities across nine provinces & territories.

The exhibition was a celebration of the journeys, relationships & creative practices that have shaped Indigenous art at ECU over the past six decades.

Curated by Leanne Inuarak-Dall & Vance Wright, with the support of the Aboriginal Gathering Place.

Exhibited: February 20-March 7 2026
Photos by:

🎓 AGP Alumni Spotlight — Congratulations to recent Master of Fine Arts graduate, Grace Edwards!

Grace is a member of the Snaw-Naw-As First Nation whose multidisciplinary practice explores matrilineal knowledge, archiving, and the relationships between past, present, and future. Through painting, sculpture, and digital imagery, her work considers how materials and heirlooms carry stories across generations. Inspired by the women who came before her, Grace's practice reflects a commitment to carrying those teachings forward while creating new pathways for the future. During her time at Emily Carr, she was recognized as a recipient of both the 2024 YVR Art Foundation Emerging Artist Award and the Renee Van Halm + Pietro Widmer Grad Award for Visual Arts.
Since graduating Grace has taken on the role of Museum Education Assistant at the Museum of Anthropology, where she will be responsible for supporting and coordinating community programming, educational projects, and future events at the museum.

Visit Graces recent work exhibited in the show, Every River Has A Mouth, at the Bill Reid Gallery curated by ECU Alumni member Eliot White-Hill.

Follow Grace at .havana_ ❤︎

Stay tuned for our rattle workshop this fall! 🍂✨

✨ AGP Artist Spotlight — Carly Nabess ✨

Carly Nabess is a 2-Spirit Métis maker graduating from Emily Carr University this Fall. Her practice is stitchwork, kinship, and land-based relationships while working across Métis beadwork, tufting, murals & mixed media.

Carly's current body of work, Finding Home Among the Floral Tuppies, centres on the creation of tuppies (dog blankets), where their beloved pup Banjo models! Her work explores joy, love, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Earlier this year, we were so happy to feature Carly's beautifully beaded dog tuppies in the AGP exhibition.

Join Carly at Craft Council of BC, where she'll be hosting a two-day beaded watercolour workshops in August. Spots available on EventBrite 💞

Follow Carly at 💐🐾

✨ AGP Alumni Spotlight – Cole Pauls ✨

BFA alum Cole Pauls is a Champagne and Aishihik First Nations citizen, Tahltan artist, illustrator, printmaker, and comic creator from Haines Junction, Yukon. Through graphic novels like Dakwäkãda Warriors, Pizza Punks, Kwändür, and his newest release We See Stars Only At Night, Cole shares stories that celebrate communities and everyday life. Throughout his work he blends humour with storytelling and was inspired to write comics by his desire to help Native children.

Since graduating in 2015, Cole has published four graphic novels, held a solo exhibition at Artspeak, received the Indigenous Voices Award for Dakwäkãda Warriors, and won the BC & Yukon Book Prize for Kwändür. His work can be found at many local Indigenous markets and on his online shop.

Follow Cole at Cole James Pauls
https://tundrawizard.com/

🧵 Doll Making Workshop with Eila Vallevand

Second Year ECU student Eila Vallevand (Kwanlin Dün First Nation) joined us this spring for a doll making workshop with AGP students, staff and faculty. Everyone hand-sewed their dolls, added beaded features and made mini outfits while learning techniques rooted in Eila's sewing & beadwork practice.

🪡 Follow Eila at, https://www.instagram.com/holiass/

✨ AGP Alumni Spotlight - Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher ✨

Meet Maria-Margaretta, an Emily Carr BFA alum and Red River Michif artist whose focuses on beadwork, photography, sculpture & everyday objects. Her practice is an exploration of the Michif self-archive, autobiographical beadwork and objects of the everyday. Using Métis identity as a place of transformation she questions how memory, experiences, motherhood, and ancestral relations influence her understanding of self.

Maria's beaded rubber gloves series transform ordinary objects into traditional garments placing value on labours of love and turning ordinary objects into something deeply personal.

Most recently, Maria's work has been featured in Capture Photography Festival with Aansaamb, the Michif word for “among", a photograph of her daughter in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, along the South Saskatchewan River.

Keep up with Maria at

Copper Pendant Workshop — Aaron Nelson-Moody, or “Splash”, lives and works in the Capilano Village in North Vancouver and spent the best part of his youth in the Cheak’mus Village in Squamish. He is working mainly on jewelry engraving and still carves larger houseposts and panels on commission. During the workshop Splash taught the process of creating small copper pendants including paddles, hands and arrowheads. Pieces were processed by sanding, hammering, and etching until a desired appearance for a variety of uses such as jewelry or keychains.

Currently, Splash is teaching woodcarving at Langara College and Topics in Industrial Design this summer at Emily Carr University.

Stay tuned for more workshops this Fall 🍂

This past Spring the AGP welcomed Cheyenne Rain LeGrande for an artist talk & Bepsi-tab workshop. Students learned to create Bepsi-tab bracelets, woven together with colourful ribbons ✨

Since graduating with a BFA in 2019, Cheyenne has continued to explore history, knowledge & traditional practices through an interdisciplinary practice that spans installation, photography, video & public art.

Keep up with Cheyenne at 💞

AGP Alumni Spotlight - Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun is an Emily Carr University Master of Fine Arts graduate (2023), Coast Salish artist, curator, writer, and researcher from Snuneymuxw First Nation.

Eliot's multidisciplinary practice spans digital art, painting, sculpture, creative writing, public installation, curation, and illustration. Grounded in Coast Salish teachings, history, and storytelling, his work explores the relationships between culture, community, land & identity.

Since graduating Eliot has continued to expand his practice through research and travel & his work has been exhibited internationally, including at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Field Museum in Chicago. Most recently, Eliot served as guest curator for Every River Has A Mouth: The Visual Languages That Connect Us at the Bill Reid Gallery. The exhibition brings together Salish artists working across sculpture, textiles, painting, and mixed media, highlighting the artistic relationships that connect Salish peoples.

★We're inspired to see alumni continuing to shape conversations around art & culture★