Sierra Barber
Portals

We are excited to present Portals, a new exhibition and special project with Sierra Barber. Barber is a Mohawk/Mixed-European artist from Port Dover, Ontario, registered at Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Working primarily with oil paint and glass seed beads, she brings together two materials with very different histories to explore memory, cultural continuity, transformation, and connection.

Her paintings draw on the beaded souvenirs and 'whimsies' that Mohawk and Tuscarora communities made for tourists around Niagara Falls in the nineteenth century, objects that carried Haudenosaunee knowledge and symbolism beneath their Victorian-inspired decoration. Using both vintage and contemporary beads, Barber retraces and transforms these historic forms, bringing in recurring motifs like the strawberry, a symbol of life and ancestry that also reflects her hometown's agricultural landscape. Her beaded frames, inspired by the whimsy picture frame, become thresholds and vessels for memory, speaking to how cultural knowledge, love, and inheritance are carried through the body across generations.

For a list of available works, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com