Walter Phillips Gallery opens Cheryl L’Hirondelle: where the voice touches (((acts, utterances, transmission for freedom))), celebrating the artist’s multi-decade career

Press Release

February 05, 2026

The exhibition presents L’Hirondelle’s career-spanning exploration of nēhiyawin (Cree worldview), on view from February 13 to June 21, 2026, and features the performance-based artwork, yāhkaskwan mīhkiwap (aka light tipi).

BANFF, AB, FEBRUARY 5, 2026 – Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is thrilled to present the first career survey devoted to the expansive, multi-decade practice of the interdisciplinary artist and singer/songwriter, Cheryl L’Hirondelle at Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery. The exhibition, Cheryl L’Hirondelle: where the voice touches (((acts, utterances, transmissions for freedom))), running from February 13 to June 21, 2026, brings together decades of works across performance, video, “net.art” originally sited online, and in sound and installation.

Born in Alberta with family ties to Papaschase First Nation and Kikino Métis Settlement, and based in Saskatoon, the artist’s practice is grounded in nēhiyawēwin (Cree language) as the sounding of nēhiyawin (Cree worldview). In her work, nēhiyawēwin appears as syllabic tags marked in chalk or assembled with stones in the land, as voice and radio transmission, and in digital spaces including as net.art. The exhibition’s title references L’Hirondelle’s ongoing interest in echolocation as a means of listening to place and responding, reflecting how her use of sound and song has deeply informed her practice across media and contexts.

L’Hirondelle has produced and exhibited work at Banff Centre throughout her career, making this the ideal venue for her first career survey co-curated by Tarah Hogue (independent) and Jacqueline Bell (Director, Walter Phillips Gallery and Collections). Her first appearance at Banff Centre occurred in 1990, with a number of the artworks on view previously presented or produced on campus over the subsequent decades.

We are honoured to work with the artist on this career-spanning exhibition of her practice. Like the voice—central to L’Hirondelle’s work in performance, song, and in sounding in relation to land and others—her practice moves with freedom across multiple spaces of reception, contexts and media. We hope that in assembling many of these works together for the first time, audiences will gain a deeper understanding of the breadth of the artist’s work and its critical and historical impact across numerous fields of practice, from net.art and performance to socially engaged work and installation.

Tarah Hogue and Jacqueline Bell, co-curators of the exhibition

Across her practice, L’Hirondelle often invites participation and at times works through shared authorship, creating situations that ask visitors to listen attentively and to consider their own position within networks of relation. Many of the works in this exhibition operate through modes of reception that run counter to the constraints of the white cube, emphasizing presence, duration, and responsiveness. In this context, freedom encompasses both L’Hirondelle’s insistence on artistic autonomy and a nēhiyawin understanding of freedom, in which self-determination is exercised through responsibility and in relation to others.

Among numerous works, the exhibition includes: nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land), 2008, restored 2023, a net.art work originally accessible online where sounds reflecting the artist’s practice of singing the landscape can be accessed and changed via the digital interface of the work; ēkaya-pāhkāci – Don’t Freeze Up v2, 2019, a multisensory installation incorporating video projection and sound that evolved from a live performance; and Here I Am (Bless My Mouth), 2013, featuring songs co-written by the artist and a group of incarcerated women and their literacy teacher in Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, a minimum-security federal prison located at Nekaneet First Nation, Saskatchewan, which are voiced by others and shared through an installation incorporating audio, video and large-scale panorama.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle: where the voice touches (((acts, utterances, transmissions for freedom))) will be celebrated with a free opening reception with the artist present on February 12 at 5 p.m. and a free exhibition tour at Walter Phillips Gallery on April 1 at 5:30 p.m. Attendees of Walter Phillips Gallery are also invited to attend yāhkaskwan mīhkiwap (aka light tipi) on February 13 at 6:15 p.m. yāhkaskwan mīhkiwap (aka light tipi) is an ongoing performance-based artwork that L’Hirondelle has brought to various cities and communities since 2014. In the work, she invites artists, storytellers, and participants to gather around a tipi formed through beams of light cast into the night sky. The drifting smoke from burning sage bundles makes the tipi visible to viewers, welcoming audience members to experience knowledge sharing through storytelling and song. The performance will be co-hosted by L’Hirondelle with performer Anders Hunter (Îyârhe Nakoda) and invites participation from artists in residence and faculty in Banff Centre’s Toga da wôhnagabi: Music Creation Residency 2026.

It has been such a pleasure working with the curators and all the trusted folks from Banff Centre and Queen’s University to bring these works together—such good relations all around. My hope is that people will come to participate and experience the exhibition and the various different projects and make their own good relationships with the work, remembering and honouring the right relations we all need to maintain and uphold, while visiting here on this beautiful land.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle

Cheryl L’Hirondelle: where the voice touches (((acts, utterances, transmissions for freedom)))

• Dates: February 13, 2026, to June 21, 2026
• Venue: Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
• Address: 107 Tunnel Mountain Dr., Banff, Alberta
• Price: Free
• Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Public Events

• Opening Reception: Thursday, February 12, 2026 | 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• yāhkaskwan mīhkiwap (aka light tipi): Friday, February 13, 2026 | 6:15 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
• Exhibition Tour: Wednesday, April 1, 2026 | 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada, and Government of Alberta.

Walter Phillips Gallery is grateful to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (AGNES) and Vulnerable Media Lab at Queen’s University, who as part of the Emulator Library for Media Art (ELMA) project have revived two works by Cheryl L’Hirondelle and a digital publication she guest directed in the exhibition. AGNES recognizes the Canada Council for the Arts for funding the ELMA project. Walter Phillips Gallery also acknowledges Vulnerable Media Lab’s restoration of the work, nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land), 2008 with support from the artist’s nephew, Callum Beckford, funded by Queen’s University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The artist would also like to thank SK Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts for funding to assist in preparation for this exhibition.

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See Banff Centre’s Media Room here.

For photos, information, or interview requests, please contact:

Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca

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