BB Iskwew & Ryley Williams

Calgary, Canada

Kayla Bellerose (bb iskwew) is a sakâw nehiyaw iskwew and Métis multi-disciplinary artist
from Slave Lake in Treaty 8 territory. The stylistic linework of plant life throughout bb iskwew’s work is rooted in learning native plant knowledge and is influenced by her family’s beadwork designs and stories. Through the mediums of muralism, beadwork, illustration and photography, bb iskwew hopes to share visual medicine with the world and contribute to a collective healing and restorative future. Kayla was also a BUMP 2021 & BUMP 2022 muralist.

Ryley Williams is a mixed first nations/settler person who currently lives and works in Mohkinstsis. His bloodlines are mixed up in the history of what we now know as northwestern Alberta. As relatives have opened up and dug a little deeper, he has traced relatives to the Beaver, Cree, Haudenosaunee, and Carrier peoples, as well as the settler histories of the Irish, Welsh, and French people who came
here for farmland at the turn of the 19th century.

Ryley’s art practice is based around (but not limited to) storytelling through auditory and visual mediums such as drawing, painting, filmmaking, and writing. He often incorporates themes related to his confusing bloodlines while also maintaining a unique creative voice that nods to the historical while playfully exploring new media. Often, his works include aspects of assemblage and colourful, layered compositions that maintain a narrative but can be read in an abstract sense.