Shelley Niro

Shelley Niro is a Bay of Quinte Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Turtle Clan.  Niro works in a variety of media including beadwork, painting, photography and film.  Since the late 1980s, she has prolifically produced and exhibited ambitious work at a high level, nationally and internationally.   

Niro attended a graphic arts course at Durham College in Oshawa, concentrating on photography, drawing, and art history.  Years later, she went to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, where she graduated with Honors.  In 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design University.  

Niro was the inaugural recipient of the Aboriginal Arts Award, presented through the Ontario Arts Council in 2012.  In 2017, she received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts from the Canada Council of the Arts, the Scotiabank Photography Award, and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Reveal Award.  She is an honorary Elder in the Indigenous Curatorial Collective.  In 2019, Niro received the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award from the Ontario Arts Foundation.  Most recently, Niro collaborated with curators at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, National Gallery of Canada, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian to present her first major retrospective, 500 Year Itch, which spanned fifty years and included over 200 works.