Lot J

For Marcy Friesen, beadwork is about ancestral memories, family, and community. In this portrait series, beadwork is photographed as a cultural belonging. The work both honours and departs from its traditional symbolic representation, responding directly to Indigenous community and personal experience.

With her beaded portraits, Friesen uses intricate beadwork to convey an emotional response to the unmarked graves unearthed at residential schools around Canada. Rage, empathy, sorrow, and hope—these emotions are “beaded” onto expressionless faces as an act of protest and lament.