Dark Chapters closing event with David Garneau and guests

Saturday, June 21 | 7pm

David Garneau returns with guests Susan Musgrave, Paul Seesequasis, and Fred Wah, for an artist talk and reading event, featuring excerpts from the Dark Chapters publication and amongst the artworks in Gallery A. This event is free and open to the public.

Dark Chapters opened on March 21, and will be available to view until Saturday, June 28.

To honour and celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day, the Nelson Museum is encouraging people to visit Lakeside Park earlier in the day, where the West Kootenay Métis Society will be hosting events. For more information visit the Métis Kootenay Metis Society’s Facebook page.

Dark Chapters opening reception: Friday, March 21, 2025 | Photos by Louis Bockner

About Dark Chapters:

Rocks and books, bones and shadows—studied in isolation, interpreted by 17 leading artists, poets, essayists, and academics from across the country—come together in Dark Chapters, a striking project by Métis artist David Garneau. Presented as both a touring exhibition and a publication, Dark Chapters explores the tension and balance between everyday objects and powerful cultural symbols.

Garneau’s still life paintings feature familiar items paired with references to his Indigenous heritage—such as a Métis sash or burning sweetgrass. Like traditional still lifes, the arrangement creates meaning, but Garneau deepens this with evocative titles like Future Portrait of the Artist (a skull on a plinth) or Visiting a Relative in the National Gallery (a shrouded display case), opening space for layered interpretation.

“Garneau has subverted the still life tradition in meaningful ways,” says Curator Arin Fay. “The exhibition and accompanying book invite viewers to consider how perspective shapes both what we see and how we understand.”

David Garneau (Métis) is a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. He is a painter, curator, and writer who engages creative and critical expressions of Indigenous contemporary ways of knowing, being, and doing. In 2023, he received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art: Outstanding Achievement and was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.