Nadya Kwandibens

Nadya Kwandibens is Anishinaabe from the Animakee Wa Zhing #37 First Nation in northwestern Ontario. She is an award winning photographer and a Canon Ambassador. In 2008 she founded Red Works Photography. Red Works is a dynamic photography company empowering contemporary Indigenous lifestyles and cultures through photographic essays, features, and portraits. Red Works specializes in natural light portraiture and headshots sessions plus event and concert photography. Nadya’s photography has been exhibited in group and solo shows across Canada and the United States. She currently resides in Tkarón:to on Wendat, Haudenosaunee, Mississauga of the Credit River & Dish With One Spoon Territory. In 2023, she was declared the City of Toronto’s third Photo Laureate.

Nadya Kwandibens
Nadya Kwandibens, Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress, 2019. Courtesy of the artist

Current Exhibitions & Programs

From the Archives

  • 2023 / core / exhibition

    Group Exhibition
    Materialized

    Critical Distance
    Combining portrait photography with elements from adornment arts, textiles, sculpture, and customary Indigenous art practices, Materialized examines themes of intergenerational memory, familial narrative, and decolonization through the work of artists Joi T. Arcand, Celeste Pedri-Spade, Catherine Blackburn, and Nadya Kwandibens. By using their craft to reclaim portraiture as a form of self-expression and self-determination, each artist resists the colonial metanarratives contained in settler-made images of Indigenous subjects.
  • 2023 / core / exhibition / outdoor

    Nadya Kwandibens
    Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress

    Artscape Youngplace Billboard
    This outdoor component of the exhibition Materialized presents an image by newly-appointed Toronto Photo Laureate Nadya Kwandibens. Photographed at the Naotkamegwanning roundhouse, the portrait depicts three Anishinaabekwewag sharing a candid moment of laughter, subverting the “stoic Indian” trope that characterizes historical portraits by non-Indigenous photographers. It is said that laughter is medicine—this image brings together that energy with the healing power of the jingle dress.
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