NEW YORK, NY.- Hales is presenting Portrait of a Living Room, a solo exhibition by Shelley Niro (Six Nations Reserve, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Turtle Clan). Niro’s first solo show at the gallery features a complete series of intimate portrait paintings from 1990—exhibited for the first time in twenty years and debuting in the US. Niro’s first major retrospective Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is currently touring the US and Canada, most recently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery.


Explore Shelley Niro’s bold, boundary-crossing visions—add Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch to your Amazon cart now for an inside look at her influential oeuvre.


Niro is a multidisciplinary artist who, in a celebrated oeuvre spanning four decades, has developed an influential and visionary practice that foregrounds the representation of Indigenous Peoples, their history, and present-day experience. Her explorations draw upon the timeless cultural knowledge and generational histories of her Haudenosaunee community, Iroquoian- speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast America. Working across multiple media, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, beadwork, printmaking and collage, Niro’s urgent work advocates for the importance of self-representation.

Across the series of paintings in Portrait of a Living Room, Niro depicts family and friends from her community, as well as herself. Made during the year of the Oka Crisis in 1990, the first well publicized conflict between First Nations and provincial governments, the series was born out of a desire to directly challenge negative stereotypes of First Nations peoples perpetuated by the media. In portraying contemporary daily life, Niro reclaims control of the image of her community, destabilizing dominant narratives through the power of visibility.

Niro’s portraits highlight a strength of spirit and a freedom of self-expression through a distinct painterly language which skillfully engages urgent themes with a playfulness and warmth. The sitter is central to each composition, filling most of the canvas as features of the living room are replaced with bold, enveloping color. Shining a light on the individuality of her subjects, visual signifiers such as body language, facial expressions, clothing, and accessories underscore the subjects’ personalities. Niro then inscribes the works with personal details—their name, nation and age as a declaration of identity. In this, the portraits act as a commemorative archive, both celebrating and memorializing important bonds.

Shelley Niro (b. 1954, Niagara Falls, New York) lives and works in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Niro received a Diploma in Performing Arts, from Cambrian College, Sudbury, Ontario in 1972. She went on to gain an Honors Fine Arts Degree in painting and sculpture from the Ontario College of Art in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Western Ontario in 1997. In 2023 Niro received an honorary doctorate of Law from the University of Western Ontario.

Niro’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, USA; Institute of American Indian Arts, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, USA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, USA; The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Toronto, ON, Canada; New York State Museum, Albany, NY, USA; Portrait Gallery of Canada, ON, Canada; Sámi Museum, RiddoDuottarMuseat, Norway; Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC, USA; and Washington State Library, Seattle, WA, USA; among others.

Her work has been included in exhibitions throughout Canada, the US and internationally, including The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada; The Art Gallery of Hamilton, ON, Canada; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; The Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, USA; The Museum of Art and Design, NY, USA; The Taserliak Cultural Centre, Greenland; The Martin-Gropius Bau, Germany; The University of Foscari, Italy.

Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Hamilton with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, New York and the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition was first presented at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY, USA (2024); touring to Art Gallery of Hamilton, ON, Canada (2024); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON (2024); Vancouver Art Gallery, BC, Canada (2025); Remai Modern, Saskatoon, SK, Canada (2025).


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