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# Shelley Niro on Her Life in Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/shelley-niro-on-her-life-in-art/
- Published: 2024-05-30T20:25:46.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:14:38.000Z
- Description: The Mohawk artist talks about her birthplace of Niagara Falls, growing up on the Six Nations of the Grand River, and disrupting stereotypes with work that ranges from beading to filmmaking.
- Author: Hyperallergic
- Tags: Podcast, Shelley Niro, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-large, #Import 2025-11-24 09:36 (2023, 2024, part 2)

Shelley Niro (Kanien’kehaka) grew up watching her father craft faux tomahawks to sell to tourists who flocked to her birthplace, Niagara Falls. In this episode of the Hyperallergic podcast, she reflects on how witnessing him create these objects planted the seeds for her brilliant multidisciplinary art practice spanning film, sculpture, beading, and photography. 

She joined us in our Brooklyn studio for an interview, where she reflected on growing up in the Six Nations of the Grand River, the Native artists she discovered on her dentist’s wall but rarely encountered in a museum before the mid-’90s, and her latest obsession with 500 million-year-old fossils.

An expansive review of her work is currently featured in a traveling retrospective, [*Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch*](https://www.artgalleryofhamilton.com/exhibition/shelley-niro-500-year-itch/?ref=hyperallergic.com), which was organized by Canada’s Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH), with support from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the [National Gallery of Canada](https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/exhibitions-and-galleries/shelley-niro-500-year-itch?ref=hyperallergic.com) (NGC). The exhibition was co-curated by Melissa Bennett, senior curator of Contemporary Art at AGH; Greg Hill, an independent curator who is a former senior curator of Indigenous Art at the NGC; and David Penney, associate director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the NMAI.

When this interview was recorded, the show was on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. It was on display from February 10 to May 26 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and will be exhibited next from June 21 to August 25 at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/05/niro__ancestors-m-stories-of-women.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/05/niro__time-travels-through-us.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/05/niro_500-year-itch-1.jpg)

Left: Shelley Niro (Six Nations Reserve, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Turtle Clan), “Ancestors” from M: Stories of Women series (2011; 2022 reprint), color inkjet print, 53 x 33 inches; Center: Shelley Niro, “Time Travels through Us” (1999), gelatin silver print, cotton and beaded mat work, silver painted wood frame, 37 x 33 inches; Right: Detail of Shelley Niro, “The 500 Year Itch” from This Land Is Mime Land series (1992), hand-tinted gelatin silver prints in hand-drilled mat board, 37 x 22 inches (images courtesy the National Museum of the American Indian)

The music and sound effects in this episode are from the films “Honey Moccasin” and “Tree” by Shelley Niro, courtesy of the artist. 

Subscribe to Hyperallergic on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hyperallergic/id1112233641?mt=2&ref=hyperallergic.com), and [anywhere else](https://podcast.hyperallergic.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) you listen to podcasts. You can also watch this episode on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuoMRa9wGzE&ref=hyperallergic.com).