Tiffany Shaw-collinge

WITH A KEEN SENSITIVITY TO PLACE, THE MÉTIS ARTIST AND ARCHITECT IS RESHAPING THE PUBLIC REALM FOR THE BETTER

Within the newly designed Kinistinâw Park in downtown Edmonton, Alberta, Tiffany Shawcollinge’s family pattern is woven, like thread, along the underside of an angular crimson canopy. By marking the structure with the traditional northern Cree-métis beading patterns her family has used for generations, the Sci-arc-trained designer asserts Indigenous stewardship and ways of knowing, the motif serving as coded language to welcome Indigenous communities into a place that hasn’t always been accepting of their presence. “I just wanted [to create] a space for people to have rest and reprieve again,” she says, “to feel something greater than themselves.”

As an interdisciplinary designer (she’s an architect, an artist and a co-founder and core member of the Indigenous collective Ociciwan), Shaw-collinge produces work that’s diverse yet holistic, each project informing the next in a shared engagement with the public realm. Take Indigenous geometries, a modular installation developed with artist Tanya Lukin Linklater for the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The dome-like enclosure of laminated bent-wood bars — inspired by the architecture of Linklater’s Alutiiq community in southwestern Alaska — emerged after months of rumination on a seemingly straightforward question with an elusive answer: What does Indigenous performance look like? Dancers eventually activated the design, dragging the wood segments into unrecognizable configurations to speak to the structural dismantling of Indigenous governance and the labour involved in restoring traditional knowledge. A similar approach is evident in her most recent project, with Florence Yee and Arezu Salamzadeh, for the digital exhibition “Exchange Piece.” Highlighting the importance of tea and gifting in their respective cultures, it explores the “fortifying” of relationships “out of circumstance.”

Relationality is the grounding force in all of Shaw-collinge’s work, where community, collaboration and care remain central to her exploration of space. “I’m much stronger because of the people around me,” she says. “I want to make a better place for them — and for myself — than what we’ve had before.” _EMMA STEEN

A floral pattern developed by Tiffany Shaw-collinge’s great-grandmother Margaret Paulin adorns the underside of a bright red Dialog-designed armature in Edmonton’s new Kinistinâw Park.