Maria-Margaretta’s practice explores the ways in which her role as a mother and her deep connection to her ancestry and her Métis heritage converge to create her understanding of self. For the 2025 Festival, Margaretta was commissioned to create a site-specific installation titled Aanssamb, the Michif word for “among.” This photograph is installed on the façade of the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation building on a busy thoroughfare in downtown Vancouver. The word “among” immediately conjures a broader group, a sense of belonging to a community and being in the company of others, ideas that flow through this work as well as the artist’s broader practice. Aanssamb depicts the artist’s young daughter holding a bundle of beaded clothing on her ancestral homelands of St. Louis, Saskatchewan, along the South Saskatchewan River. She holds an infant shirt, made by the artist, her mother, embellished with traditional Michif floral motifs. The shirt is wrapped around a stone axe head that was gifted to the artist by her father. These objects, carrying stories, histories, love and care, tether the three generations together. Situated along the riverbank, the symbolic articles are where they belong, held and carried by the artist’s daughter, among the land that has raised generations of Métis families and kin. Aanssamb makes visible a lineage of inheritance through the passing down of worlds and knowledges through love and care.
Emmy Lee Wall
Can you discuss the process of creating this work – from concept to finished photograph?
Maria-Margaretta
Aanssamb is a continuation of a series in which I document myself engaging with beaded objects and objects of importance within my Michif archive. This particular beaded garment was made for my daughter as my first gift to her postpartum. These plaid infant shirts serve as regalia and draw on a similar style of shirts I created for myself, like the work “comin round for coffee.” Building on floral motifs used in previous artworks, the piece solidifies her place in our familial material archive. Around this time, I was gifted a stone axe head by my father, which symbolized the passing down of knowledge to the next generation. At some point after my daughter outgrew the shirt, I wrapped it around the stone for transportation, merging the objects.
When considering photographing these works, I knew I wanted to travel with them to my Métis homelands in Saskatchewan on our annual road trip through the Prairies. Visiting sites important to my Michif family so my daughter would know those spaces and they could know her. One day, we drove up to St. Louis, Saskatchewan, and sat next to the water. I had my pieces with me to show any cousins I might bump into. I placed the pieces on the ground beside me and my daughter reached out to pick them up, and of course she did, she knew the work, she knew the beads belonged to her. It was a moment of connection relating her to all her ancestors who had known and loved that land.
ELW
Was this process different for you because you were thinking of this as a public art project rather than a work for an interior gallery space?
MM
I actually spent a lot of my twenties working as a server at a restaurant on Burrard Street. So I had this lived experience and understanding of how this piece could function and what it might be up against. I wanted to focus on removing the noise of industry and concrete structure of the urban landscape to hold the viewer. In doing so, I am presenting an extremely intimate moment of connection in collaboration with the expansiveness of the sky above. I often think of my works as portals and glimpses into the past, presents, and futures. With this very large-scale public-facing work, I feel it functions similarly by invoking the viewer’s relationship to place while briefly transporting them to other worlds or moments in time.
ELW
The work was shot along the banks of the Saskatchewan River – can you share a bit about the cultural significance of the site?
MM
The photo was taken along the South Saskatchewan River in my ancestral homelands of St. Louis, Saskatchewan. Our family homestead is on Riverlot 12 and is located on the same banks where my grandpa, Raymond Boucher, grew up. We are a Resistance family, we fought and sacrificed to continue caring for that land. There are many caretakers from my lineage who still remain there building Métis futures.
ELW
It’s beautiful the way your work embraces motherhood and family. I’m curious about the ways in which you weave your familial relationships into your practice and how your role within your family informs your work.
MM
My practice has always been intertwined with the personal and the everyday. The objects in my work are intentional. They carry different stories and histories, and they often remark on memories of moments or family members. An important part of creating these beaded works is archiving and documenting them for the next generation to allow for a re-remembering and access to these methods of making and knowledges. With the birth of my daughter and this new role as a mother, my work naturally expanded to include our everyday life with her and my partner. My practice shifted and adapted to create in new ways that welcomed slowness and care. I think a lot about domestic labour and overlooked labour and what society places value on. I realized that motherhood and parenting my daughter are just as much a part of my artistic practice, even if it doesn’t feel like I’m being productive in the ways capitalism demands of us. These everyday moments in all of their complexities, of love and togetherness – that is the world-building I’ve been dreaming of.
ELW
I love the way you describe the merging of your everyday life with your artistic practice! You describe the objects in your work as those which connect your daughter to her ancestral history, and the image you created as one which connects viewers to place. Would you say this idea of connection is an ongoing theme within your practice?
MM
Absolutely. A lot of objects and themes within my practice are circular in the sense that they all relate back to one another and are ongoing in their development. When I look at my extended body of work, they are all in relationship to one another. My practice has always been a way to tell my stories through distinct personal experiences and how those in turn connect to broader themes of identity and belonging. This has allowed for many really beautiful moments of relationality. In that way, I think my work always connects me back to place and to loved ones and histories – while creating openings for others to engage and see themselves in the pieces.
