Elliptical Lineages Artist Spotlight - seth cardinal dodginghorse & Glenna Cardinal
Posted on
July 07, 2025
Elliptical Lineages presents the work of artists that engage in the creative practices of a family member or those whom they consider kin. Curated by Jacqueline Bell, Director, Walter Phillips Gallery and Collections at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Elliptical Lineages is on view from June 7 to September 7, 2025.
The exhibition complicates conventional ideas of artistic lineage and reflects on the exchange of knowledge between generations. Hear directly from a number of the artists exhibiting in Elliptical Lineages as they reflect on their work on view.
Installation view of Elliptical Lineages, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2025. From left to right: seth cardinal dodginghorse, nasagha (home), 2025, courtesy of the artist; tīná gúyáńí, nadisha-hi at’a (I am going home), 2023, courtesy of the artists. Photo: Rita Taylor.
seth cardinal dodginghorse & Glenna Cardinal
My mom had the idea because I had studied silk screening in school, and she thought, well, if you can print on a shirt, maybe we could print on this animal hide. So we tried it out before, in 2019, and it worked really well. In 2023, we thought we'd give it another try, and we created this work. And like my mom said, part of the work was that we wanted to honour the women in our family as well—women who come from the land that my mom raised me on, that her mom raised her on, and her grandma raised her on—going through the women on our Tsuutʼina side.
seth cardinal dodginghorse
Installation view of Elliptical Lineages, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2025. tīná gúyáńí, nadisha-hi at’a (I am going home), 2023, courtesy of the artists. Photo: Rita Taylor.
Being a mother, your kids and your family touch all your work. As an artist and mother, everybody is part of that whole process of creating this artwork and even the cat touches some of the work too.
Glenna Cardinal
Installation view of Elliptical Lineages, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2025. seth cardinal dodginghorse, nasagha (home), 2025, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Rita Taylor.
About seth cardinal dodginghorse
seth cardinal dodginghorse is a Tsuut’ina, Amskapi Pikanii, and Saddle Lake Cree multidisciplinary artist, Prairie Chicken Dancer, experimental musician and cultural researcher. They grew up eating dirt and exploring the forest on their family’s ancestral land on the Tsuut’ina Nation Reserve. In 2014 their family was forcibly removed from their home and land for the construction of the Southwest Calgary Ring Road. This life changing event has been a driving force in their creative work and activism. They are currently a part of the artist collective tīná gúyáńí (deer road) which also includes their mother, Glenna Cardinal.
About Glenna Cardinal
Glenna Cardinal is a Saddle Lake Cree Nation member that resides on the Tsuut'ina Nation land of her maternal grandmothers. A mother of two artist/musicians. A 2023 graduate of the Indigenous Master of Social Work program at University nuhelot’įne thaiyots’į nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills, St. Paul. She has been recognized as a finalist for the Salt Spring National Art Prize, SSNAP Society (2021, 2023). Her art practice is informed by land, language, ceremony, ancestral history, and her lived experiences as the child of Indian Residential School (IRS) and day school survivors past and present. This multidisciplinary artist enjoys installation work through film, fabric, textiles, photographs, print making, and archival research.
Along with her child seth cardinal dodginghorse they are a parent/child art collective—tīná gúyáńí (deer road). They were long listed for the Sobey National Art Award, Sobey Art Foundation (2022). Their artwork honors Tsuut'ina Nation grandparents’ and the reserve land they were displaced from in 2014, to make way for the South West Calgary Ring Road—an 8-lane highway. Currently, she is an advocate and member of the Calgary Arts Development Indigenous Advisory board
Elliptical Lineages
Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
107 Tunnel Mtn Drive, Banff
June 7 to September 7, 2025
FREE