MELISSA SHAGINOFF

My work moves between individual creation, facilitated communal moments, and rethinking institutional ethos. With various mediums and culturally informed intentions, I create and do work that addresses systemic issues preventing sustainability, agency and equity. Whether through a series of paintings, scraping a moosehide in my village, or a holding workshop on Land Acknowledgement, every aspect of my work centers Indigenous values and ways of being. In these various forms my work explores my very Dene (Athabascan) notions of potlatching, matreilineal power, linguistic knowledge, storytelling, and material beauty rooted in land.

Melissa Shaginoff is part of the Udzisyu (caribou) and Cui Ui Ticutta (fish-eater) clans from Nay'dini'aa Na Kayax (Chickaloon Village). Melissa is an Ahtna and Paiute person, an artist, a social activist and currently the curator of Alaska Pacific University’s Art Galleries. Within her current curatorial work, Melissa has focused intently on potlatching. She believes that the only future in which institutions embody Indigenous ideologies is one that publicly recognizes its power, and autonomously gives it away. Melissa has participated the Island Mountain Arts Toni Onley Artist Project in Wells, British Columbia as well as the Sheldon Jackson Museum Artist Residency in Sitka, Alaska. She has been published in First American Art Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Learning Lab page. Her artwork is collected by the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Palmer Museum and the Pratt Museum. Melissa was selected for the Skövde Musuem’s AiRs International Artist Residency in Skövde, Sweden, she is currently working on a year long project revolved around social engagement and conversation as art practice.