Publication_Information
Cheryl L'Hirondelle Artist Talk
March 14, 2025 - March 14, 2025
This talk discusses L'Hirondelle’s recent practice, while providing visitors a deeper understanding of her upcoming exhibition, Why The Caged Bird Sings — Immersive Engagements, opening March 14th at PAVED Arts! image: Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Here I Am (installation view). Photo by Barbara Reimer.
About the Artist
Cheryl L'Hirondelle is an interdisciplinary and community-engaged artist; a singer/songwriter and a critical thinker whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy waskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) and Kikino Metis Settlement, Alberta. Her work investigates and attempts to articulate the dynamism of nehiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place with a practice that incorporates Indigenous language(s), audio, video, virtual reality, the olfactory, music and audience/user participation to create immersive environments towards 'radical inclusion.'
As a songwriter, L'Hirondelle's focus is on both sharing nehiyawewin (Cree language) and Indigenous and contemporary song-forms and personal narrative songwriting as methodologies toward survivance. She has exhibited and performed widely, both nationally and internationally.
L'Hirondelle is the recipient of two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards (2005, 2006), two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (2006, 2007) and she is a recipient of the 2021 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Art. She holds a master's degree in Design from OCAD University's Inclusive Design program (2015). L'Hirondelle also the Director of Miyoh Music Inc., a small Indigenous niche music publishing company and record label.