Kelly Greene is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, of Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk), Onenio’te’a:ka (Oneida), and European (Sicilian) ancestry, and is a descendant of Turtle Clan. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photo montage.
Greene has lived in
London, Ontario since 1989, where she was honoured to give birth and raise her
two amazing children, and where she still resides with her husband. She
obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario after beginning her
visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she
moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States
for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland
Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario as well as other renowned galleries and museums in Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.;
Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in several public and private
collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two
permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been
awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
and was honoured to be selected as the inaugural Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her
art primarily references topics relating to environmental issues, Haudenosaunee stories and teachings, and injustices to Indigenous People, recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People
who have always lived on the land now known as Canada. Greene not only specifically acknowledges the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations in 1784. but also the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful
Grandma attended in the 1920’s. It closed in 1970, but this structure still stands, fully renovated, on the grounds of the Woodland Cultural Centre for future generations to know about this dark history that was hidden for so long. Another primary concern is the current plight of bees,
vanishing due to human activity and overpopulation. The ever-alarming condition
of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother
Earth as human, appealing to our species' egocentricity, hoping empathy will be
instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be
revived and thrive.