Kainai Filmmaker Damien Eagle Bear Opens when you see it at Contemporary Calgary
Damien Eagle Bear. wysi paahtómahksikimi, 2026. Courtesy of the artist.
Kainai Filmmaker Damien Eagle Bear Opens when you see it at Contemporary Calgary
Visitors are invited to see the land through a Blackfoot lens in the third iteration of the Ksahkomiitapiiks Artist Residency.
Calgary, AB (October 19, 2026): Contemporary Calgary is proud to present when you see it, a new exhibition by Damien Eagle Bear for the annual Ksahkomiitapiiks artist residency, opening Thursday, October 22. The evening will include remarks and a special In-Conversation between the artist and his residency mentor, celebrated Kainai artist and Contemporary Calgary Board of Directors Member Faye HeavyShield.
Eagle Bear is an award-winning filmmaker from the Kainai First Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy. In when you see it, he turns his eye to significant areas across Blackfoot territory, contemplating a personal and cultural relationship to the land. The resulting film portraits ask visitors to examine their own comprehension of, and connection to, the land.
The exhibition honors Indigenous knowledges as ancient sciences in their own right. Having sustained life on this land since time out of memory, these ways of knowing continue to be minimized. In response, Eagle Bear challenges the formal conventions of documentary film to centre a Blackfoot way of seeing.
“I’m grateful to be the Ksahkomiitapiiks artist in residence,” says Eagle Bear. “The opportunity to reflect on my own relationship to this land and to further explore my documentary practice has been a special journey. One that I won’t forget any time soon.”
“Ksahkomiitapiiks is the energy of land through art and I’m thankful to be a part of it,” explains Mentor, Faye HeavyShield. “The artists: Star Crop Eared Wolf, Lauren Crazybull and now Damien Eagle Bear, are gifts.”
Drawing on his background as a documentary filmmaker, Eagle Bear questions the formal standards of the medium. Rather than observing the land from the outside, the work embraces a Blackfoot gaze, one rooted in relationship, memory and responsibility.
The opening runs 6 to 9 PM on Thursday, October 22. Remarks begin at 6:30 PM in the Atrium, followed at 7 PM by an In-Conversation with Damien Eagle Bear and Faye HeavyShield in the Heather Edwards Theatre. Admission is free and no registration is required.
Interviews: Damien Eagle Bear and Faye HeavyShield are available for media interviews, and both will be in attendance at the opening on Thursday, October 22.
Media are invited to contact:
Jason Krell, Public Relations Contact for Contemporary Calgary
jk@jasonkrell.ca | 403.862.7380
Additional Resources and Full Artist Bio
Theme: Land, Indigenous knowledges, relationship, ways of seeing
Medium: Film installations housed in sculptural structures
Ksahkomiitapiiks Artist Residency, mentored by Faye HeavyShield, in the Atrium and Flanagan Hallway, October 22, 2026 to June 27, 2027.
What Visitors Will See: when you see it is presented as a series of film installations housed inside sculptural structures in the Atrium and the Flanagan Hallway. Each structure is positioned to replicate the orientation of the place where its film was shot, so visitors face the same direction the camera did on the land itself.
These are not landscapes in the conventional sense. Across the five films, Eagle Bear shifts between different scales of looking: from expansive views of the landscape to close observations of particular plants, textures and sections of the land.
Each place is approached as a living presence with its own history and knowledge, seen through the eyes of someone in relationship with it. The exhibition asks visitors to slow down, notice what a familiar view might be holding, and recognize that this land has long been read, understood and cared for by the people of this territory.
Things to Consider:
What do you know about the land you live on, and who taught you?
What changes when land is seen as a relative rather than a resource?
Whose ways of knowing are recognized as science, and whose are not?
What might you see differently the next time you look?
About the artist
Damien Eagle Bear (he/him) is an award-winning Niitsítapi filmmaker from the Kainai First Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy whose work explores belonging and Indigenous resilience. He works across documentaries, mockumentaries, music videos, short films and web series as a director, screenwriter, producer, editor and cinematographer. His first feature documentary, #skoden, a portrait of Pernell Bad Arm, whose image was taken for a viral meme, premiered at Hot Docs in 2025. It won the Earl A. Glick Emerging Filmmaker Award, the Vancouver Film Studios Award for Best BC Director at DOXA, and Best Feature Film at the Oki Corral Film Festival.
About the mentor
Faye HeavyShield is a Kainai artist born and raised on the Blood Reserve in Southern Alberta, and a fluent speaker of Blackfoot. She studied at the Alberta College of Art from 1980 to 1985. Her minimalist practice explores memory, environment, body and language, with land and rivers as central influences.
About Ksahkomiitapiiks (Earth Beings):
Begun in 2022, Ksahkomiitapiiks is an annual, Indigenous artist residency focusing on responsive practices and dynamic public programs that interrogate and nurture our relationships with the land.
Interpreted in English as Earth Beings, Ksahkomiitapiiks, is both a noun and a verb: embodying who we are and what we create as guests on this earth. Spoken aloud, it is an invocation — a blessing, a call for prayer, witness, and inspiration.
The residency is conceived as an active land acknowledgement, offering an alternative to static statements. It is intended as a process of collective learning – an opportunity for all peoples to reflect on our shared responsibilities as custodians of the land.
Through ongoing dialogue with the advisory committee and local Indigenous communities, we have come to understand that land-based knowledge is alive and resilient – carried within the body, collective memory, and the land itself. It is intuited and learned through observation and care, and is rooted in a relationship of stewardship, not ownership. Across cultures and histories, people have long lived in close relationship with the natural world, guided by practices of care, reciprocity, and respect for the land. Ksahkomiitapiiks was developed to create space for new generations of Indigenous artists to deepen that reconnection, to generate new knowledge, and to carry forward ancestral languages, practices, and relationships with the land.
Ksahkomiitapiiks is developed in consultation with an Advisory Committee of Indigenous Community Members and Elders. This year’s Advisory Committee consisted of Faye HeavyShield, Clarence Wolfleg Sr., Adrian Stimson, and Lauren Crazybull. Faye HeavyShield was the mentor of this year’s edition of the residency.