Susan Blight facts for kids

Susan Blight is an Anishinaabe artist, filmmaker, and teacher from the Couchiching First Nation in Canada. Her art often explores who we are and how we connect to the places around us. She is well-known for her public art projects in Toronto, Ontario.

In 2016, the City of Toronto put up street signs with Anishinaabe names. This happened because of a project called Ogimaa Mikana, which Susan Blight helped start.

Learning and Education

Susan Blight has studied a lot about art and media. She earned a special degree called a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Windsor. This degree focused on different types of media, like video and digital art.

Before that, she got two degrees from the University of Manitoba. One was in Photography and the other was in Film studies. She is also working on another advanced degree in Social Justice Education. This means she is studying how to make society fairer for everyone.

Her Work and Projects

Susan Blight creates art that mixes different forms, like film, photography, and public displays. Her projects often bring together public art with Anishinaabe culture, language, and history.

In 2008, her photographs were shown in a group art show at Gallery 44. In the early 2010s, she also helped host a radio show called Indigenous Waves. This show shared Indigenous voices and stories.

The Ogimaa Mikana Project

In 2013, Susan Blight and her friend Hayden King started the Ogimaa Mikana Project. This art group works to bring back Indigenous names for streets in Toronto. They do this by putting up billboards with Anishinaabemowin words around the city. Anishinaabemowin is the language of the Anishinaabe people. They also put stickers with Anishinaabemowin names on street signs.

Blight explained that one billboard in Parkdale, Toronto, helped people remember the long history of Indigenous people in Toronto. It also helped affirm their connection to their language and spiritual beliefs.

Three years later, the City of Toronto worked with the Ogimaa Mikana Project. They put up official Anishinaabe street signs in a neighborhood called The Annex. Susan Blight and Hayden King helped advise them on this project.

In 2018, the Ogimaa Mikana Project was part of a big art show called Soundings. For this show, they created an outdoor art piece called Never Stuck. It was a large vinyl design placed on a building at Queen's University.