Bonnie Devine
Introduction
Bonnie Devine is an Ojibway installation artist, performance artist, sculptor, curator, and writer from Toronto, Ontario. She is currently the interim director of the Aboriginal Visual Cultural Program and associate professor in the faculties of Art and Liberal Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Background
Bonnie Devine was born in Toronto and is a member of the Serpent River First Nation. In 1997 Devine graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, with degrees in sculpture and installation, and she earned her master of fine arts degree at York University in 1999.
Artwork
As a conceptual artist, Devine works a variety of media. At a 2007 solo exhibition, Medicine River, at the Axéneo 7 art space in Quebec, she created eight-foot long knitting needles and knitted 250 feet of copper cable to bring attention to the contamination of the Kashechewan water system. She has fashioned full-sized canoes from paper and works with natural materials such as reeds in her 2009 piece, New Earth Braid. She also created land-based installations.
Exhibitions
Devine's 2010 solo exhibition, Writing Home, curated by Faye Heavyshield, was reviewed in Border Crossings.A solo exhibition of Devine's work, Bonnie Devine: The Tecumseh Papers was held at the Art Gallery of Windsor from September 27, 2013 to January 5, 2014.Her work is featured in the Art Gallery of Ontario's exhibition Before and after the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes.
Awards and recognition
Devine has received numerous awards, including 2002 Best Experimental Video at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, the Toronto Arts Awards Visual Arts Protégé Award in 2001, the Curry Award from the Ontario Society of Artists in 1999, a variety of awards from the Ontario College of Art and Design, as well as many grants and scholarships. She has been chosen for the 2011 Eiteljorg Museum fellowship.
Published work
- Devine, Bonnie, Duke Redbird, and Robert Houle. The Drawings and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2007. ISBN 978-0-88884-840-6.