“Get to Know” is a series that profiles Indigenous artists engaged in Harbour projects. Collective member Vanda Fleury connected with Jessie Short by Zoom in the Spring of 2022 to bring you this feature article.
Jessie Short faces art with dignity and curiosity and responds with sincerity and imagination. She makes meaning of personal, family, community, and collective experiences through timeless links to Native sovereignty. She finds harmony and balance in Métis visual culture. Threads of her identity are connected to finger weaving and sewing, and she traces every stitch to her heritage, and to her ancestral narratives. The Michif language calls on her in moments of inspiration. Concept, clarity, and confidence intersect here.
The pattern of Jessie’s artistic process is shaped by curiosity; about sexuality; about the things we all hide in the recesses of our minds. To uncover is to be true to her sacred space. It is meant to be unraveling. She is interested in gender, two-spirit identity, and gender fluidity. Two-spirt, Queer, and Indigenous Queer people are valuable community members and more effort is needed to include these perspectives and interpretations. Jessie is at home occupying this space and embodying the change that is needed. She plays with ideas around gender through floral beadwork and her performance art has her outfitted in historical Métis drag. Cloaking herself in history and taking on multidimensional identities is her way of reconnecting with people and presences.
Jessie is a multidisciplinary artist and having a range of voices in art allows her to recognize and appreciate the diversity in her own work, and in relation to others. Between 2012 and 2019, she was an arts administrator. She was the Director of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective in Toronto until 2014, and she credits her time with the ICC with showing her the power of observation, and forging meaningful relationships. The currency of comradery remains special to Jessie, and in 2021, she and six other Indigenous artists were selected to be part of an exhibition with acclaimed artist and legendary activist, Yoko Ono.
Finding symmetry is a transformative process that affects her sprit, motivation, goals, and her art. Jessie gained this insight through the challenges she has overcome. Despite having the best laid plans, she dropped out of Art school. For Jessie, it was rigid and crushing and she says, “art school killed art for me.” This experience made her aware of the limitations of defining success through formal education. She realized that thinking about art and social sciences was more beneficial to her and instead, focused on the practical and applied knowledge acquired through experiences. Jessie has never looked back.
She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Regina in an interdisciplinary program. Her work expands Métis stories of 1885 and the rich history, of which so little is known. Jessie responds to social justice issues through her writing and research. She takes issue with biased language like discovering and her work explores Indigenous and settler histories, and the continuation of colonial problems. She tips her hat to the academics, artists, and aunties whose wisdom is a guiding light, at every crossing.
Her dedication and passion support her work in documentary film, where the accessibility of video allows her to cast a wide net. She is currently working on a documentary about Édouard Beaupré, who is commonly referred to as the Willow Bunch Giant. Jessie takes issue with the way(s) his story has been framed — and — recycled over the last 100 years. She says, “It’s dehumanizing. Frankly, I am tired of it.” Jessie’s story is an act of redress, where Beaupré’s legacy will be presented through the lens of Métis kinship and community narratives. We gain fresh focus by walking in another’s shoes and by design, Édouard Beaupré can step out of the shadows.
Family narratives and memories reawaken the art of Storytelling, on various levels. When she was processing film for the Harbour lab series in 2021, she was simultaneously working through a family event. Though the visual content is unrelated, lean into the audio for the soundtrack of life. Family experiences shaped more unique projects, like when Jessie and her uncle, who are both electricity enthusiasts, planned to build a working Tesla coil together. Jessie finds her substance in the unreachable and in the unknowable. Her latest beading project features the words, I want to believe, on a worn and weathered Sci-Fi hoodie. She remains curious about aliens, non-human being(s), and parallel universes.
Jessie continues to curate independently and work collaboratively with other Métis artists. She is mindful of her energy and time, and her circle of connectivity is intertwined with in-person visits, purposeful correspondence, and serendipitous moments. Get to know Jessie by following her creative projects: She invites you to experience transformation and possibility through her vessel Pained, which was conceived for the WATER EVENT exhibit at Contemporary Calgary: https://www.avenuecalgary.com/city-life/work-of-art/water-event/.
Jessie Ray Short is an artist, filmmaker and independent curator of Métis, Ukrainian and German descent. Jessie Ray’s practice involves uncovering connections between a myriad of topics that interest her, including, but not limited to, space and time, Indigenous and settler histories, Métis visual culture, personal narratives, spiritual and scientific belief systems, parallel universes, electricity, aliens and non-human being(s). Jessie Ray explores these topics using mediums such as film and video, performance art, finger weaving, sewing, writing and curating. She has been invited to show her work nationally and internationally, including at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, at La Chambre Blanche in Québec City, Art Mûr Berlin (a satellite exhibition of the Contemporary Native Art Biennial/BACA) in Germany, and at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival in New Zealand. Jessie Ray is deeply grateful to be based in oskana kâ-asastêki or Pile of Bones (also known as Regina) in Treaty 4 territory.
“Get to Know” series is made possible with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Creating, Knowing and Sharing.
