Aylan Couchie (she/her) is a Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist, curator and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. She is a Georgian College alumna starting out in the Art & Design Fundamentals program (2012) and then completing a Fine Arts Advanced degree in 2015. She then headed east to Halifax to complete her BFA at NSCAD University in sculpture and installation (2016). From there, she moved to Tkarón:to, achieving her MFA in the Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design program at OCAD University where she focused her thesis on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. She’s currently in her fourth year of study at Queen’s University where’s she’s a PhD Candidate in the Cultural Studies program researching areas of land+language+Indigenous placemaking through mapping, naming and public art.
Couchie has been the recipient of several awards including an “Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture” award through the International Sculpture Centre and a Premier’s Award through Ontario Colleges. In 2023, she was chosen by Queen’s University as their sole nominee for the annual SSHRC Talent Award. She is a committee member of Nipissing (Nbisiing) First Nation’s Language and Culture committee and a Board Member for Native Women in the Arts where she served as Board Chair from 2018 to 2020. She’s a single Mom to three boys and Gookmis (Grandmother) of four. She splits her time living and working between her Nbisiing home community in Northern Ontario and Tkarón:to where she is employed as Assistant Professor of Indigenous Digital Art, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto.
Current Solo Exhibition: Survival of the Fittest – Sept. 19th to Oct. 20th, 2024, Campus Gallery, Georgian College, Barrie ON
CV and Contact Info
LinkTree portal to find me on Social Media
Recent Exhibition: Singing Mother Earth, MoCA Busan, South Korea (Sept 2023 – Feb 2024)
“Singing Mother Earth attempts to reconnect with non-human nature by opening up the human enclosure to the outside world. Above all, the exhibition aims to flexibly and softly expand our anthropocentric worldview. To this end, the exhibition focuses on language. Language is perceived as uniquely human as the essence of human culture. However, this view limits the scope of language to humans. Is language a uniquely human ability? Renowned linguist Steven Roger Fischer (1947-) expands the definition of language to include any means of information exchange that connects the living world. When language is viewed in this light, it becomes an effective tool for mediating communication with non-humans, rather than a barrier that separates humans from animals. In How Forests Think (2013), anthropologist Eduardo Kohn (1968-) argues for the existence of a forest language (symbols) based on clues from the indigenous Amazonian word “tsupu” (the sound of hitting the water surface). He argues that we can relate to the living world through a process of breaking free of human conceptualized language and recognizing the non-symbolic signs of non-human nature….“
Curatorial statement excerpt — read FULL STATEMENT HERE
Things to Check Out:
- Blog Post (2024): Survival of the Fittest – Campus Gallery, Georgian College – photos from the exhibition, curatorial statement and curatorial essay.
- Blog Post (2023): in parallel – The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery – photos from the opening night, curatorial statement, curatorial essays and other writings about the four works in the exhibition as well as artist statements.
- Article: “We Didn’t Know the Monument Was So Important Until Someone Said It Should Be Removed”, CMagazine, Issue 142, Summer 2019
- Article: “Zeal Without Wisdom: Rushing for Reconciliation” by Aylan Couchie, CMagazine, Issue 139, Fall 2018
- Article: “The ‘Site-Specific’ art and politics of Aylan Couchie”, Anishinabek News, February 2018
- Podcast: Talking Art with Aylan Couchie, The Roundtable Podcast with Wayne K. Spear, January 13, 2018
- Article: Anti-seal hunt rhetoric ignores facts and suppresses Indigenous culture, by Ian Mosby & Aylan Couchie, The Globe and Mail, Oct 2017
- Article: Returning Our Voices to Us: The recent debate about cultural appropriation shows that true reconciliation is not about saying sorry, it’s about listening to Indigenous Voices by Aylan Couchie, IRPP Policy Options, May 2017
Aylan Couchie 
I don’t have a Twitter or Instagram account and there’s no e-mail listed for you, so I hope you don’t mind my reaching you here.
I just wanted to thank you for putting up the side-by-side pictures of Norval Morriseau’s work and Amanda PL’s. I’d seen paintings by both, but not of the same subjects the way those two are, so I didn’t understand why painting in the same style as Mr. Morriseau or using the same colour palette would upset someone as long as the subjects weren’t the same or a traditional/teaching story or an element of one hadn’t been used inappropriately. Having seen the two paintings side by side, I’m don’t see how anyone could see them and think ‘inspired by’ was even remotely accurate. If something inspires you, you make something that may reflect the original in some way, but is very clearly something of your own. That’s not what happened with those two paintings: it looks as if Amanda PL just plain copied Mr. Morriseau’s. Making a copy is fine if you clearly identify it as a copy because then the person who made the original gets the credit for creating it, but it’s not fine when you copy something so closely people can barely tell the difference and then try to pass it off as yours.
Those pictures together were worth a thousand words. Once again, thank you for posting them.
Dear Aylan,
I saw your tweet about the WEP article. I’m glad it was a good experience for you.
And thank you! We really appreciate that you agreed to share your story with us.
Please email me your address and i’ll send you a copy of the paper.
Best,
Janet Morassutti, Managing editor, WEP