bio

Megan Samms (they/she) is an L’nu and Nlha7kápmx multidisciplinary artist who works in mediums that allow them to best present the story they are telling. She is known for weaving and natural dye work, but uses photo, words, and performance interventions too. Samms lives in her home community in one of their two ancestral territories, Katalisk, Ktaqmkuk, Mi’kma’ki, Wabanaki Territory.

Samms thinks and works anticolonially; they work on multiplicity, and contrastingly considers fragmentation while carefully weaving together place with meaning and presence. Their work results in layered materials, sometimes functional objects from the hand, words from the heart, and narrative based on active presencing and revision.

Most recently, Samms has shared work in solo and group exhibitions at Artist Run Centres, regional galleries, non conventional or non institutional art spaces like abandoned buildings or outdoor spaces, at various festivals, and at institutional spaces too, like the Rooms provincial gallery in Ktaqmkuk; Samms was a participating artist in the Bonavista Biennale in 02023. She has long offered workshops across her territories in various disciplines. In 02024, Samms was awarded the Theodore Prize (Beaverbrook Art Gallery) in Fredericton, Wabanakik; in the same year she was nominated for the Sobey Art Award (National Gallery) and for various awards from VANL-CARFAC while being shortlisted for the Craftsperson of the Year award. Samms’ work has been shared in a variety of artful publications including the Guild of Canadian Weavers Bulletin, Riddlefence Magazine, and Beside Magazine. They have received generous attention from media outlets such as CBC, Downhome Magazine, East Coast Living Magazine, Visual Arts News, and the Globe & Mail. Samms is the chair of Union House Arts, an artist run centre in Port Union, Ktaqmkuk. Their (continued) education is land, peer-to-peer, and mentorship based.

a note

I live in my home community, Katalisk, Ktaqmkuk, Mi’kma’ki territory, Wabanaki’k - one of my two ancestral territories. I am also connected to ƛ'q'əmcín (ltKumcheen), or Lytton, in Nlha7kápmx territory, so-called British Columbia. I am an internationally Indigenous person of Mi’kmaq and Nlha7kápmx descent; I come from the Samms, Noseworthys, Halls, Youngs, Gagnons, Cennames, Watkinsons, and from Cexpen’nthlEm (David Spintlum).

I hope that my practice(s) serve then, now, and people yet to be. I try to articulate anticolonial values by examining and living story, experience, presence, and interconnected relationships. I hope that making my work generates more story-sharing and more living and more examination and unravelling of the colonial project, in all of its presences.

If you require to view my CV, please contact me.

 

photo courtesy of Pilvi Keto-LeBlanc

 

I co-run an off-grid, regenerative farm with my partner in love and life, Ash Hall. It’s cute and called Tuckaway Farm, Apiary & Apothecary. You can read about it, here.

We host a very grassroots residency on our farm, in the Loom Shed! Read about our Artist in Residence program here.

I am grateful for the support and opportunities gifted me from ArtsNL and Canada Council for the Arts. I am hugely grateful for the support from my family, friends, by collaborators, readers, and those of you who engage with my work. Biggest thanks!

 
 

Follow @livetextiles on instagram to stay in touch, for thoughts and day-to-day stuff.

sometimes the world feels impossible, or, it feels impossible to be fully in it, or really, that it’s been made/i’ve been swayed to feel that way. #fuckcolonialism and then every time my world right here is imagined and built and realized
k i rarely post pics of my self, but i felt like it, it’s my favourite time of year, and i can’t share what i’m working on publicly yet! i been deep down the wishing well of finishing up works made together for two years. it’s
this work is about mapping toward recognizing our place as person. it’s a declarative and non-possessive claim to place, an expression of ancestral guidance, geo-choreographical events and eventing and presencing, its about place-person, and it
i’ve been tangled up in blanket making for a long time. blankets in the making and the being and the living as a part of the land and the stars, the ancestors and the future people. blankets in the making and being as medicine, as power, as val