Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew

Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew is a Cree/French Canadian half-breed from the Peace River region in Northern Alberta. Since his studies at Emily Carr College of Art & Design and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, he has established a practice as a media-integrated performance artist and writer while also working for the past ten years as an arts administrator contributing to opportunities for First Nations artists within artist-runculture, including a two year First Nations arts administration internship at the Canada Council in Ottawa.

His critical writing in Mix Magazine and Fuse magazine addresses many aspects of contemporary First Nations arts practice. His creative works concentrate on examinations of the ways that First Nations history, spirituality, and language influence and operate within contemporary First Nations experience of urbanized street-level fringe culture including the influences of drugs, prostitution, and other forms of criminalization, especially within the lives of those young First Nations people who are forced to negotiate danger, empowerment and, too often, mere survival at these margins.

His last project was the writing, artistic direction and coordination of the collaborative performance project Asowaha at the grunt gallery in Vancouver. Prior to that he co-curated, with Debra Piapot, the nine artist collaborative performance series Nanatowihitowin Acimowina (Healing Stories) at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He has performed at artist-run centres in Vancouver and Quebec City; served on a number of arts juries, recommendation committees, and advisory panels; and was privileged to be one of the assistant technical coordinators at the Edge '90 Performance and Installation Art Festival in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

His current project, Isi-pikiskwewin Ayahpikesisak (Speaking theLanguage of Spiders), is part of a larger multi-year collaborative production that will be initiated as a World Wide Web screenplay/storyboard (for later production as a CD-ROM and subsequently as an installation) in the Pop, Mass n' Subcultures Residency at the Banff Centre. Support is gratefully acknowledged for this phase of development from the Canada Council Media Arts Computer Inãtegrated Media Program and the Banff Centre for the Arts Media and Visual Arts Program.