Painter
Visual artist
Michael Barber is an Indigenous artist (Upper Mohawk) from Port Dover, ON registered at the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.
I started to paint 30 years ago after the suicide of my father. In my work I explore my past and the lives of those close to me particularly the residential school system. Loss of culture, loss of language and loss of identity are all explored through my mixed media paintings and sculptures. My current work explores the concept of birds as messengers that report back to broken mothers: Mothers of children stolen by the Government and church, some as young as four years old, many of them never to return.
Messenger’s Song
This piece is a painting that I did last year that depicts a mother receiving news from birds about her child’s fate at the residential school.