Greg Staats is Skarù:reˀ (Tuscarora) / Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) b. 1963, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. He is a Toronto-based artist whose ongoing Hodinöhsö:ni’ restorative aesthetic accumulates knowledge from the Skarù:reˀ(Tuscarora)/Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) language embodied in wampum, (quahog and whelk shells)— the medium of truth with the intention of recording the heart and good mind of the Hodinöhsö:ni’.
Staats exists in the liminal space of interconnected placemaking inherent with the body, land, and memory. His practice conceptualizes Land as Monument embodied within an intuitive artistic practice of gathering images from archival sources, including his on-reserve lived experience, trauma, and the explorations into ceremonial orality. Staats’ lens-based language documents cycles of return towards a complete Onkwehón:we neha (our original ways).
This major solo exhibition is centred on Staats’ new work, Runners Continuum: a series of fourteen successive photographs. In this piece, he explores the identity and role of runners as they run between nations with the wampum string of notification of condolence and other matters. Staats imagines the runners’ footsteps within the language and living metaphors of the good mind. The runner then exists in the context of pre-colonial contact and the post-Great Law of Peace, while carrying a message of reciprocal and worldview when all words were together.
Runners Continuum, along with additional new photographs, video, and sculptural works, silently speak to Staats’ position of being in a state of constant reflexive return with his own practice, personal narrative, Hodinöhsö:ni’ teachings, and place within creation. At the AGH, Staats’ works will be exhibited in the Southam and the Steiner Galleries.
Greg Staats is a Toronto-based artist whose works combine language, mnemonics, and the natural world. Staats’ practice is an ongoing process of conceiving a Hodinöhsö:ni’ restorative aesthetic that defines the plurality of relationships with trauma and renewal. His practice employs mnemonics of condolence, articulated in visual forms that hold body and place including: pictorial drawings, oral transmission, text works, embodied wampum, photography, sculpture, performance, installation, and video.
Staats, active as an artist since 1981, studied Applied Photography at Sheridan College. He is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Solo exhibitions include: Art Gallery of Ontario, daphne Indigenous Art Centre, articule, Montreal, Kelowna Art Gallery, Urban Shaman Gallery, Tom Thomson Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, KWAG, Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, G44, Trinity Square Video/Images Festival, Galerie Séquence, QC., and CONTACT Photo Festival at Todmorden Mills. Group exhibitions include: AGYU, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Varley Art Gallery of Markham [OAAG award 2019], MOCNA, Sante Fe. Staats served as Faculty for two Aboriginal VA Residencies, Banff Centre (2009, 2010). Staats’ works are held in public, private, and corporate collections. Residencies include: AGO, Open Studio, the Banff Centre, AGYU, TSV, and University of Waterloo Longhouse Labs Fellowship 2024/25. Upcoming solo exhibitions: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, ON (2026). Staats has been awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Inaugural Indigenous Artist Award (2021), and the 2024 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Image credits:
Greg Staats (Mohawk b. 1963), Runners Continuum (1 of 14), 2024, archival digital pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
Greg Staats (Mohawk b. 1963), Runners Continuum (3 of 14), 2024, archival digital pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
Greg Staats (Mohawk b. 1963), Runners Continuum (9 of 14), 2024, archival digital pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
Read “Runners Continuum: In Conversation with Greg Staats” at the AGH Magazine.
