Montréal, 2025.Photo: document original, courtesy of the artist & PHI, Montréal
Nico Williams’s largest solo exhibition to date, Bingo, opened with a beaded declaration: LANDBACK. BODYBACK. (2025). This rallying cry, rendered in shimmering glass beads on two needlepoint works, set the tone for a show that was both playful and politically charged.
The exhibition occupied four floors, weaving together strands of Indigenous sovereignty, queerness, community, consumerism, and cultural exchange. On the first floor, the theme of land was evoked through amended needlework and sculptural works that spoke to boundaries, control, and claims over territory. In the installation Zhi-biindiged gwaya (2022), beaded beach chairs emblazoned with the flags of Canada, Québec, and the United States sat on smooth river rocks, suggesting both leisure and dispossession of land. Works on the second floor were grounded around themes of queerness and identity. In Silence No More (2015), a set of antlers adorned with a ball gag simultaneously evoked kink, dominance, and silence. An erotic scene was set by the beaded shorts of Flamer (2022), set atop a tiled plinth and bench that conjured a locker room or bathhouse. In Uncle (2023), a red-and-black flannel shirt — a staple of rugged Canadian masculinity — became a soft target for deconstruction. Williams queered these tropes through adornment and practical impossibility.
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