Barry Ace

Barry Ace (born 1958) is a First Nations sculptor, installation artist, photographer, multimedia artist, and curator from Sudbury, Ontario, who lives in Ottawa. and belongs to the M'Chigeeng First Nation.

Ace's work includes mixed media-paintings, and mixed media textile and sculptural work that combines traditional Anishinaabe textiles and beadwork with found electrical components. Ace has a strong interest in combining Indigenous and global technologies, aesthetics, and techniques in his artwork.

Early life Barry Ace was born in Sudbury, Ontario. Ace's heritage links him to Chief Assance (alternatively spelled Aisance, Aissance, and Essens) of the Nigig (Otter) clan, the otter being an important messenger figure in Anishinaabe history. In 2015 he taught a workshop at the Ottawa Art Gallery where participants made a collective mixed media map of the city of Ottawa. He also led a workshop for children from an Ojibwe immersion school in the fall of 2016 where the artwork produced by the children was later displayed at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation.

Themes Much of Barry Ace's work uses found materials like capacitors, resistors, and light-emitting diodes, and traditional Great Lakes-style floral beadwork to comment on "cultural endurance undeterred by centuries of colonial oppression and rapid social change." Ace's work explores the relationship between historical techniques and traditions and contemporary materials and subject matter. By referencing the history of Anishinaabe textile art in works that use contemporary mass-produced materials, among other themes Ace investigates the dialogue between Indigenous and European cultures, much like fellow artists Rosalie Favell and Jeff Thomas do. One example of this is the history of the use of glass beads from European traders in Indigenous beadwork that Ace references in his textile pieces. Some of Ace's work explores the particular aesthetic of technology and popular culture in Indigenous art, something that fellow artist Rosalie Favell also incorporates in her work. Ace's performance and essay was part of Robert Houle's Paris/Ojibwa research project which opened at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris.

Selected exhibitions Barry Ace was featured in Emergence from the Shadows: First Peoples Photographic Perspectives (1996) held at the Canadian Museum of History and curated by Jeff Thomas. The exhibition involved six contemporary Indigenous photographers addressing representations of Indigenous culture through their engagement with and display of their work alongside historical photographs from the museum, including portraiture. The artists that Ace exhibited with were Mary Anne Barkhouse, Rosalie Favell, Greg Hill, Shelley Niro and Greg Staats. Native Fashion Now: North American Indian Style at the Peabody Essex Museum (2016), Always Vessels at Carleton University Art Gallery (2017), It's Complicated with 007 at Central Art Garage (2017), raise a flag: works from the Indigenous Art Collection (200–2015) at OCAD University (2017), Insurgence/Resurgence at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (2018), and Radical Stitch at the MacKenzie Art Gallery (2022).

Barry Ace's artwork has been exhibited at galleries such as the National Gallery of Canada, including Abadakone in 2019, the Ottawa Art Gallery, Karsh-Masson Gallery, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Woodland Cultural Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Ottawa Art Gallery, Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development Canada, the National Gallery of Canada, Nordamerika Native Museum, the City of Ottawa, and Global Affairs Canada. Ace won the Ontario Association of Art Galleries' Curatorial Writing Award in 2012 for his essay "A Reparative Act," which was written for Robert Houle's Paris/Ojibwa exhibition catalogue. Connecting Indigenous curators and cultural producers across Canada, the ACC has played an important role in gathering a strong Indigenous arts community and supporting curatorial and writing projects that share the many voices that make up that community. The group provides an alternative and experimental space for Ottawa-based Indigenous artists at different stages in their careers, and supports them by providing opportunities for self-curation, public engagement, and critique.