about — Rain Cabana-Boucher

RAIN
CABANA-
BOUCHER

Rain Cabana-Boucher is a Michif and British settler interdisciplinary artist raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on Treaty 6 territory. Their family has historical ties to the Michif communities of St- François-Xavier, St. Boniface, and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. They live and work on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Working across drawing, painting, sculpture, beadwork, and installation, Cabana-Boucher brings Michif material traditions into conversation with experimental approaches to image-making and assemblage. Their practice questions the terms and limits of representation, considers the possibilities of attending to colonial histories and notions of commemoration in a minor key, and intervenes in established understandings of Indigeneity, labor, value and experience within the hegemonic imagination within so-called Canada. Attending to urban Indigeneity and the nuanced subjectivity of Indigenous peoples, they explore how colonial histories persist across contemporary social, political, and physical landscapes. Through abstraction, obscuration, and unexpected material juxtapositions, Cabana-Boucher's work challenges prescribed ideas of queer/Michif identities and aesthetics.

Their work has been exhibited at the Polygon Gallery, Burnaby Art Gallery, Legacy Art Galleries, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Open Space, and the Queer Arts Festival. They hold a BFA from the University of Victoria and are currently an MFA candidate in Visual Arts at the University of British Columbia.