In an exclusive interview with Indigenous-SME Business Magazine, Angela Wiggins, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) Contemporary Artist, shares how art becomes a space to navigate identity, memory, and presence in a modern context. This conversation explores how creative practice can hold both personal and collective experiences while building a sustainable path as an artist.
Interview By Darian Kovacs
Angela Wiggins is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) artist whose contemporary painting practice explores identity, continuity, and presence through gesture, colour, and symbolic form. Her work moves between personal experience and collective memory, reflecting Indigenous identity as living, evolving, and unapologetically present.
Bloodline granddaughter of Henry Rufus Trudeau and a great-granddaughter of Gabriel Trudeau and Victoria Peltier of Wikwemikong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Wiggins carries forward family histories shaped by displacement and the lasting impacts of residential schools. These realities inform her work while allowing space for resilience, renewal, and self-determination.
Her paintings often explore the space between ways of knowing, echoing the principle of Two-Eyed Seeing, a framework that encourages understanding the world through the strengths of both Indigenous and Western perspectives. Through layered colour, movement, and recurring symbols such as hands, figures, and elements of land and water, Wiggins creates visual fields that speak to connection, healing, and continuity.
You describe your work as moving between personal experience and collective memory, grounded in Anishinaabe identity and Two‑Eyed Seeing—how did you begin to understand painting not just as art, but as a way to hold family history, resilience, and contemporary Indigenous presence in the same frame?
My understanding of art shifted when I began to recognize what was missing. Like many people impacted by the legacy of residential schools, I grew up without access to clear family history or cultural continuity. There were gaps,stories that were never passed down, identities that felt fractured, and a quiet sense of not fully belonging to either side.
Over time, I realized I was not alone in that experience. There are thousands of us navigating the same struggle, all capable, creative, and searching for something that was interrupted. Painting became a way to hold that complexity. Not to reconstruct the past in a literal way, but to acknowledge its absence and the resilience that exists alongside it.
Through the lens of Two-Eyed Seeing, I began to understand my work as a bridge, between personal experience and collective memory, between what is known and what is felt. The figures I paint often exist in that in-between space, carrying both strength and uncertainty.
My work is not about looking back. It is about making visible a contemporary Indigenous presence that continues, adapts, and holds meaning, even when the full story was never given. I found a community in the fog, people learning to stand without a clear place to land, and no where to belong.
Turning a fine art practice into a sustainable business is notoriously difficult; what have been the most important decisions or shifts that helped you move from “making work” to building a studio that earns income through originals, commissions, licensing, and partnerships while staying true to your voice?
At some point, I had to let go of the idea that building a life in art would unfold like a romantic story. It doesn’t. What I came to understand is that if I wanted this to be sustainable, I needed to approach it with the same clarity and structure as any serious business.
That meant learning how the art world actually functions, pricing, markets, licensing, partnerships, and making intentional decisions about how my work could exist across different levels, from original paintings to prints and collaborations. It required research, discipline, and a willingness to treat my practice not just as expression, but as a viable studio.
At the same time, I made a very clear decision not to compromise the core of what I’m building. The work……..especially my exploration of Two-Eyed Seeing……. this remains the anchor. Everything else is built around protecting and extending that voice, not diluting it.
I’m still in the process of building that life. It’s not finished. But it is intentional, shaped by both creative vision and a deep commitment to making it sustainable.
I didn’t abandon the dream…..I built a framework strong enough to hold it.
The principle of Two‑Eyed Seeing invites us to draw on the strengths of both Indigenous and Western ways of knowing—how does that idea show up in your day‑to‑day creative process, and in what ways do you see contemporary art helping to create dialogue rather than tension between those perspectives?
Two-Eyed Seeing, for me, is not just a concept, it reflects how I exist in the world. It speaks to the experience of carrying multiple ways of knowing at once, shaped by lineage, lived experience, and the reality of navigating spaces where those perspectives don’t always fully align. It’s not something I separate or apply; it’s something I live within.
In my creative process, that often begins intuitively. I follow a sense of energy, movement, and emotion before I fully understand where it’s coming from. That space holds both personal experience and something larger…..memory, presence, and connection that isn’t always clearly defined but is deeply felt.
Because of that balance, my work tends to invite people in rather than create tension. It doesn’t ask viewers to choose a side or arrive with prior knowledge, it creates space for reflection, recognition, and personal connection.
For me, the goal is not to resolve the space between perspectives, but to hold it. That space is where dialogue begins.
Recently, works like Midnight Messenger and other paintings have moved from your studio walls into public and institutional spaces, including national collections; as your work enters these contexts, how do you see contemporary artists like yourself contributing to cultural dialogue and reshaping Canadian visual storytelling about land, history, and Indigenous continuity?
As my work moves into public and institutional spaces, I’m aware that it begins to contribute to a larger visual language, one that shapes how stories of land, history, and identity are understood in Canada.
There are many people living in Canada who exist between perspectives, those I consider “two-eyed” people. Their experiences are often overlooked by one bloodline or the other. Yet those lived realities carry a depth of understanding that is essential. Their presence, and their way of seeing, belongs within the story of this country.
Elder Albert Marshall teaches that we are not owners of knowledge, but its keepers, we hold that knowledge until someone else takes our place to carry the knowledge forward. That understanding stays with me. It reminds me that this work is not about claiming space, but about contributing to something that continues beyond us.
Because of that, the work creates dialogue rather than division. It doesn’t replace existing narratives, it expands them, allowing more people to see themselves within the story.
One of your milestones came through an unexpected email about an acquisition that you initially thought might be a scam—a very relatable moment for many small business owners; what did that experience teach you about persistence, visibility, and the often‑quiet path from local galleries to national recognition for emerging artists?
When that email came in, I honestly thought, “there’s no way this is real.” I think a lot of small business owners have that moment where something shows up and it feels almost suspicious because it doesn’t match what you’ve been told success is supposed to look like.
But after that initial reaction, I had a very clear realization, I wasn’t building to be small. I had made a decision early on that I wasn’t going to stay contained in a local lane. I had something bigger to say, and I had been quietly, consistently putting that work out into the world, wanting my voice heard.
There was no big lead-up,no dramatic turning point, just showing up over and over again, sharing the work, and trusting that it would reach the people it needed to.
What it taught me is that visibility doesn’t always feel loud or obvious. A lot of the time, it’s happening in the background while you have your head down doing the work.
And then one day, something lands,and you realize the world has been listening, even when it felt quiet.
Disclaimer: Indigenous-SME Business Magazine is committed to providing insightful interviews that highlight the successes and challenges faced by small and medium-sized businesses. The views expressed in this interview are those of the guest and may not reflect the opinions of the magazine or its affiliates.
