Biography

bailey macabre (they/them) is an intersectional contemporary nêhiyaw (Beardy’s & Okemasis Cree Nation) artist, writer, and curator working at the critical nexus of Indigenous Futurism, disability arts, and queer sovereignty. Spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, and alternative photo processes, their practice uses tactile materiality to dismantle colonial archives and assert relational presence. Their work has been exhibited across Turtle Island, including solo exhibitions at The View Gallery and group presentations at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, The Polygon Gallery, and the Visions Museum of Textile Arts (San Diego, CA). Based on Snuneymuxw territory in Nanaimo, BC, they regularly serve as an institutional peer assessor and curator, cultivating spaces that bridge ancestral memory with speculative, lived futures.

Extended Biography

bailey macabre (they/them) is a nêhiyaw artist, writer, curator, and cultural worker, and a member of Beardy’s & Okemasis Cree Nation. Based on Snuneymuxw Territory in Nanaimo, British Columbia, their interdisciplinary practice explores kinship, memory, relationality, and Indigenous futurity through photography, cyanotype, textiles, beadwork, sculpture, painting, installation, film, and community-engaged work.

Grounded in nêhiyaw understandings of relationship, bailey’s work examines the connections between ancestors, land, community, language, and future generations. Through material processes of transformation, they investigate how histories, bodies, and objects carry memory and how artistic intervention can create new possibilities for remembrance, care, and self-determination. Across their practice, ancestors are approached as living relations, land as an active participant, and making as a form of responsibility rather than representation.

Working fluidly between studio production, curatorial practice, public programming, and institutional engagement, bailey creates projects that challenge extractive systems while fostering conditions for collective care and cultural resurgence. Their work often engages themes of grief, survival, disability, sexuality, ceremony, and belonging, not as isolated subjects but as interconnected expressions of relationship.

Over the past several years, bailey has developed an increasingly ambitious interdisciplinary practice spanning exhibition-making, public art, publishing, illustration, and community-based cultural work. Their artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at The View Gallery, The Polygon Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Visions Museum of Textile Arts in San Diego. Their first solo exhibition, pakicihew, premiered in 2023 and later travelled to a second venue, marking the beginning of a growing exhibition practice that continues to expand across installation, textile, photographic, and community-engaged forms.

Alongside their studio work, bailey has built a substantial curatorial and cultural practice. They serve as Indigenous Engagement Coordinator at Nanaimo Art Gallery, where they develop exhibitions, public programs, artist talks, workshops, and community initiatives that foreground Indigenous knowledge, relationship-building, and accessibility. Their curatorial work includes the Indigenous Takeover of Making Waves, Nanaimo Art Gallery’s creative speaker series, as well as Unsettling the Lens, an Indigenous film program developed in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada. In 2026, they co-curated their first major group exhibition with curator Jesse Birch.

bailey’s work within publishing and illustration has reached audiences across Turtle Island and internationally. Their projects include the children’s book Minnow: The Girl Who Became Part Fish, contributions to Queers at the Table (Arsenal Pulp Press), editorial and comic work for publications including The Capilano Review, The Walrus, Room Magazine, Augur Magazine, and carte blanche, and collaborations with organizations including the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Yellowhead Institute, Seeding Sovereignty, and many others. They have also contributed to significant Indigenous comics initiatives through the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival, where they previously served as the Director of Indigenous Programming.

A recipient of the Geoff McMurchy Artist Development Grant and Mentorship through Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture, bailey has continued to develop their practice through mentorship, residency, and institutional collaboration. In 2025, they completed the Early Career Winter Residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where they finalized a major installation project and developed several new bodies of work. In 2026, they participated in the Too Two-Spirited For You Winter Institute at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art under the mentorship of Adrian Stimson, alongside guest mentors Michelle McGeough and Barry Ace.

Their public art practice includes Luminous Paths with the City of Nanaimo and ongoing participation in the City of Nanaimo’s Urban Design Roster. Recent projects have expanded into large-scale installation, public art, Indigenous futurism, and community-centred forms of exhibition-making.

Drawing from overlapping histories rooted in Beardy’s & Okemasis Cree Nation, the Red River, Batoche, and the broader Prairie Nations, bailey’s practice remains grounded in the belief that art can function as a site of relation, accountability, and possibility. Whether through a cyanotype, a beaded object, a temporary installation, or a community gathering, their work seeks to honour lineage, resist extraction, and make space for collective futures.