Downtown Yonge Artwalk

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Concrete Indians

  • Photography
  • 2020
  • 21 Gerrard Street East, Toronto

About the artwork

The mural, displayed at the Ryerson Library entrance, is a photograph by Nadya Kwandibens which features traditional dancer Tee Lyn Duke. Both women are Anishinaabe from Treaty 3 territory.

Shot by Kwandibens in 2010, the black-and-white portrait shows Duke standing firm in traditional regalia as ghostly rush-hour commuters whiz by in the long pedestrian tunnel connecting subway lines at Spadina station.

The image is from Kwandibens’ portrait series Concrete Indians, which explores the ways urban spaces affect Indigenous identity. Through this series, Kwandibens said she aims to portray visibility for other Indigenous people and in doing so, explores concepts of decolonization.

The 10 x 15.7-foot portrait is on display for five years.

About the artist

Nadya Kwandibens is Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) from the Animakee Wa Zhing #37 First Nation in northwestern Ontario. She is a self-taught portrait and events photographer. In 2008 she founded Red Works Photography. Red Works is a dynamic photography studio empowering contemporary Indigenous lifestyles and cultures through photographic essays, features, and portraits.

Nadya’s artistic practice builds upon three ongoing bodies of work: Concrete Indians is an open-call series of contemporary urban Indigenous identity and a collective representation of decolonial assertions of resistance and resurgence; Red Works Outtakes is an uplifting portraiture series created to combat the “stoic Indian” stereotype; and emergence, another open-call series, focuses on resurgent acts of decolonization by means of transmission and the conveyance of Indigenous intelligence.

Nadya is also a member of the Indigenous Laws + The Arts Collective, the founding body of Testify, a travelling multimedia group exhibition. Testify pairs artists and legal thinkers to work in conversation with each other to create art pieces that explore facets of Indigenous law.

In addition to commissioned works, Nadya delivers empowering photography workshops and presentations for youth, universities, and community groups.

Fun facts

  • Tee Lyn Duke, the subject of the photo, is a jingle dancer and regularly rides Toronto transit wearing her traditional regalia, called the jingle dress or the healing dress. By wearing her regalia in urban spaces like public transit, Duke aims to challenge harmful narratives surrounding Indigenous people in Canada.