Dress to Redress: Exploring Native American Material Culture

19 March – 3 July 2022

In 2022, the American Museum & Gardens presented Dress to Redress, an exhibition of the work of contemporary Anishinabe artist Celeste Pedri-Spade.

Featuring a series of spectacular wearable-art pieces, personal artefacts and photography, alongside historical items from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition demonstrated the continuing legacy and profound importance of visual and material culture. This was the first time Celeste Pedri-Spade’s work was exhibited in Europe.

Dress to Redress focused on the role of strong women in community, using fashion to explore how stories and experiences of Indigenous and European women both connect and disconnect. Inspired by various designs and materials, Pedri-Spade uses her work to remedy the past, revising male-dominated historical narratives that fail to recognise the powerful role that women have played in their respective communities.

“In order to move towards something other than colonialism, we need to encounter it in the present, making the present connect to the past. But I also think we need more than that. We need to imagine and fashion something radically different. It is my hope that Material Kwe creates a space for this creative, decolonial work.”

— Celeste Pedri-Spade

This exhibition, which is part of the project 'Brightening the Covenant Chain', was made possible through partnership with the Treatied Spaces Research Group, with funding provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom (Standard Research Grant AH/T006099/1).