Julia Rose Sutherland

Julia Rose Sutherland is a Canadian-born artist of Mi'Kmaq Indigenous descent from the Metepenagiag Nation, Canada. Her interdisciplinary art practice employs photography, sculpture, textiles, and performance. She earned an MFA at the SUNY University at Buffalo (2019) and a BFA in Craft and New Media at the Alberta College of Art and Design (2013). She has shown and participated in residencies in Canada, the USA, China, and France. She currently resides in Mohkinstsis (Calgary, Alberta) on Treaty 7 territory.

As an Indigenous woman of Mi’Kmaq descent, her cultural heritage is a foundation for her artistic practice. Within her art practice, she engages with the trauma and social issues associated with systems of commodification, representation, and identity politics surrounding Indigenous Peoples of North America. With this, she fosters a dialogue regarding the treatment, representation, and voice of these marginalized communities. Often the work emphasizes concepts of loss, absence alongside adapted Metepenagiag Mi'kmaq Nation traditional materials and techniques. Through her work, Sutherland reconnects a sense of identity and pushes to engage a more mindful conversation around topical subjects such as addiction, mental health, feminism, and Indigenous healing praxis and identity politics.