Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a contemporary artist who explores themes of identity, environmentalism, and the human condition. His artistic practice is wide-ranging and includes large-scale public art projects, sculpture, painting, multi-media works, visual books and an opera. Combining the influence of Asian brush painting traditions with the iconography of his Haida ancestry he created a new art style called “Haida Manga.” His books include the award winning Flight of the Hummingbird (2005), RED: A Haida Manga (2009), the War of the Blink (2017), and Carpe Fin (2019). His work has toured internationally and is in the permanent collections of the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and other institutions and private collections. He is currently creating an 8 sq meter mural for the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, fabricating a public art commission for Vancouver and collaborating with the Vancouver and Pacific Opera companies and Montréal-based composer Maxime Goulet on the post-covid launch of his opera Flight of the Hummingbird. This October UBC Press will publish “Making Mischief” an examination by Dr Nicola Levell on Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ studio practice.
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8.8 Portal, by Winnie T. Frick
Permanent Regalia, by Cole Pauls