Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas Collaboration Residency

Celebrated Canadian artist targets $100,000 goal for Ukraine aid

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, whose work is displayed in the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and public and private collections worldwide, has launched a fundraising project to help victims of the Russian war. He had an exhibition scheduled this autumn at the TSEKH Art Gallery in Kyiv, Ukraine. One of the works that would have been displayed is a piece called Kyiv Child. It is a piece he created after visiting Ukraine in 2019.

“I made many friends on that trip, and now they are huddling in basements, holding their children close. They worry about food, water, and Putin's indiscriminate bombing of civilians. We decided to make prints of Kyiv Child to raise money for UNICEF Canada projects in Ukraine.” - Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Malaspina Printmakers is providing high-quality art paper and pigment, labour, and the press at no cost. Others have donated funds to cover other expenses so that 100% of the proceeds from the sale will go to UNICEF Canada.

“This work, Kyiv Child, is inspired by a centuries-old stone carving from St. Michael's Cathedral in Ukraine's capital city. On that carving, a warrior on horseback carries a spear. For my adaptation of this work, the ‘stone’ is now the hood of a ZAZ-AA03 Slavuta car manufactured in a post-Soviet Ukraine. And the warrior is replaced by a mother and child travelling over a plain gilded in gold and silver. I hope that when Ukraine is again a free country, Kyiv Child will be exhibited back in her home.” - Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Thank you to the contributors to this project including Justin Muir, Ben Duncan, Lee McKay, and Dr Launette Rieb.

Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is the only living Indigenous artist whose work is in the permanent collection of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His works are also in the collections of the British Museum, Denver Art Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Museum of Anthropology at UBC.