Shelley Niro is widely known for her ability to explore Traditional Stories, transgress boundaries, and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture. A member of the Kanyen’kehaka (Mohawk) Nation, she uses a wide variety of media, including photography, installation, film, and painting to bring greater visibility to Indigenous women and girls.

Pushing the limits of photography, Niro incorporates imagery from Traditional Stories to focus on contemporary subjects with wit, irony, and parody. Throughout her work — in her portraiture, sculptures, landscape paintings, photography, and film and video work — Niro challenges common preconceptions about gender, culture, and Indigenous Peoples.

Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch brings together 215 reproductions from Niro’s expansive oeuvre, including work published here for the first time. Also included in this career retrospective are three major essays about Niro’s work by Melissa Bennett, Greg Hill, and David W. Penney, as well as texts from seven guest artists, scholars, and curators. Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch accompanies an international touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian with the collaboration of the National Gallery of Canada.

Melissa Bennett is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Melissa Bennett's profile page

Greg Hill is Audain Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada.

Greg Hill's profile page

David W. Penney is Associate Director of Museum Scholarship at the National Museum of the American Indian.

David W. Penney's profile page