Tell me of your boats and your waters, where do they come from, where do they go? Commissioned by Edinburgh Art festival

July 28 — Sep 18, 2022

Curated by Tiffany Boyle

Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Printmakers present newly commissioned work from Montreal-based artist Nadia Myre responding to the 200th anniversary of the Union Canal.

The project - across print, installation and sound - explores reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes started on the canal, indigenous story-telling, archival research methods, pattern, prose and song. The artist's research began with the encounter of Tales Of Nanabozho in a local library in Montreal - a book published in 1964 by Scottish-born émigré Dorothy Marion Reid after moving to Canada, who recounts stories of Nanabozho, a prominent trickster character to the Anishinaabe*, provoking questions of authorship and voice reverberating into the present. As an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, Myre's work brings to the fore the decolonial impulse inherent in the artist's practice, imprinting and entangling materials with meaning.

Sited alongside the Union Canal and In Gallery 2 of Edinburgh Printmakers, Myre's multi-sited project is one of three major commissions featured as part of EAF 2022.