Art, Truth & Reconciliation

By Gerald McMaster

Chapter

Alan Syliboy, Grandmother 1, 1997 

A grandmother figure, rendered in a black-and-white photograph, sitting at a kitchen table, surrounded by painted luminous colour.

In Grandmother 1, Mi’kmaw artist Alan Syliboy (b.1952) focuses on a grandmother figure, rendered in a black-and-white photograph, sitting at a kitchen table. Her face conveys both endurance and quiet presence, resting her head on her hand as though in contemplation. Surrounding her, he overlays luminous fields of colour—yellows, turquoise, and reds—that transform the domestic space into one suffused with sacred energy. Petroglyph-inspired motifs dance across the surface: spirals, dotted lines, plants, and a stylized figure with outstretched arms. These markings recall Mi’kmaw rock carvings, some thousands of years old, translating ancestral knowledge into a contemporary visual idiom.

In this layering, Syliboy creates a dialogue between past and present, photograph and painting, memory and imagination. The grandmother at the kitchen table becomes more than an individual portrait—she embodies the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and the resilience of women who held families and traditions together in the face of colonial disruption. The painted motifs do not merely decorate the photograph but reclaim the image, reasserting Mi’kmaw presence and visual sovereignty over a scene of everyday life.

Black and white family photos against a painted maritime background.

At the time when Syliboy was raised in Millbrook First Nation, Nova Scotia, Mi’kmaw language and cultural identity were actively suppressed in the schools. Experiencing this early dissociation, he turned to art as both refuge and resistance, sketching “under the table” when he was discouraged from expressing himself creatively. Two women were especially formative in his development: his grandmother Rachael Marshall, whose teachings and presence rooted him in kinship traditions, and artist Shirley Bear (1936–2022), who mentored him in connecting contemporary painting with ancestral Mi’kmaw visual knowledge. These influences inform Grandmother 1, a work that honours matriarchal guidance and reclaims suppressed cultural traditions through vibrant, living imagery.

Grandmother 1 exemplifies Syliboy’s statement that his work is about “family, searching, struggle, and strength.” The grandmother figure becomes a symbol of survival amid assimilation policies that sought to sever language, kinship, and culture. By enveloping her in petroglyph-inspired imagery, Syliboy honours her presence and also positions her within a continuum of Mi’kmaw origin stories. Spirals evoke cycles of time, dots suggest stars or constellations, and stylized figures invoke ancestors and spiritual guardians. The overlay of colour and form transforms the mundane into the sacred, insisting that cultural endurance is not confined to ceremonial contexts but lives in everyday acts of care, resilience, and remembrance.

Ultimately, Grandmother 1 operates on two registers: as a personal tribute and as a collective statement. It esteems the artist’s own grandmother while also representing the countless matriarchs whose teachings, stories, and perseverance sustained Indigenous families through centuries of cultural oppression. By merging vivid contemporary painting with ancient petroglyph traditions, Syliboy enacts a form of reclamation, asserting that Mi’kmaw cultural presence is continuous as well as radiant, resilient, and evolving. Through this work, Syliboy affirms that art can be both remembrance and resistance. Grandmother 1 testifies to the unbroken thread of ancestral knowledge, carried through women’s strength, and illuminates the enduring vitality of Mi’kmaw culture.

Art, Truth & Reconciliation

Alan Syliboy, Grandmother 1, 1997

Collection of A New Generation of Witness

Alan Syliboy, Grandmother 1, 1997 