Anne Riley is an multidisciplinary artist with German, Cree, and Slavey Dene ancestry. Born in Dallas TX, Riley currently lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Several of Riley's works are originated from her identity as an indigiqueer, which term is used by indigenous artists including a writer Joshua Whitehead, who make space for two-spirits to practice their identity through indigenous ceremonies, as a mean of defending colonial suppression. Through art projects, Riley also explores indigenous methods of learning through embodiment and nurturing of community and environment. Riley received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012. Riley is a recipient of the City of Vancouver Studio Award.
From 2017 to 2019, Riley and her collaborator, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss worked on a public art project, A Constellation of Remediation commissioned by the City of Vancouver. Project consists of planting Indigenous remediation gardens on vacant gas stations lots throughout the city as a way of decolonizing and healing the dirt back to soil. For the exhibition Every Little Bit Hurts, at the Western Front in Vancouver in 2015, Riley made an installation titled that brings the other nearly as close as oneself. It consisted of a sculpture, made of 62 plaster molds of replicas of Riley’s hands holding each other, and a two sets of blue drawings on the wall of the art gallery. Those drawings were created as a remnant of Riley’s performance, which was documented on video and also exhibited at the exhibition. In 2015, Riley attended the Time_Place_Space: Nomad residency program in Melbourne, Australia. There, Riley expanded her scope of art practice to performance, and examined experiences of silence as gestures of resilience.
Exhibitions
Riley’s artworks often refer to indigenous people's experiences, decolonization of indigenous and women bodies, two-spirits, and healing of land and people from traumatic experiences. Exhibitions include:
2019: Spill at Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia. As a part of this exhibition, Riley and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss offered a workshop at UBC farm to demonstrate their project AConstellation of Remediation.
