Oneoneone
Kimowan Metchewais
Paper Ghosts
April 10 - May 30, 2026
Opening Reception:
Friday, April 10, 5 - 8 p.m.
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About the Artist
LIGHT Art + Design and Oneoneone are pleased to announce the opening of Paper Ghosts, a solo exhibition of works by Kimowan Metchewais [McLain], a significant Cree, Cold Lake First Nations artist (1963-2011). Being held in concurrence with Metchewais’s inclusion in the 2026 Whitney Biennial, this exhibition features large-scale mixed media photographic works and prints made at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The works on display showcase signature aspects of Metchewais’s larger oeuvre. They speak to his experience as an Indigenous artist and showcase his embrace of the ephemeral and transformational nature of materials and imagery.
In 2011, LIGHT Art + Design first presented Metchewais’s work in an exhibition featuring over 70 works, including large-scale mixed media prints, photographs, and paintings. In 2012, Cindy Spuria, LIGHT Gallery owner and director, was an active partner in facilitating the donation of a majority of Metchewais’s artwork and archive to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Kimowan Metchewais
Paper Ghosts
Kimowan Metchewais [McLain] was born on October 2, 1963, in Oxbow, Saskatchewan. He graduated from the University of Alberta in Edmonton with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in 1992 and earned his Master of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1999. In July of 1999, he moved to North Carolina and began a post-doctoral fellowship in Fine Art at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After completing a one year Visiting Artist and Lecturer position, Metchewais joined the faculty at UNC as an Assistant Professor, where he taught until 2011.
Metchewais’s work has been included in several recent major traveling exhibitions including Native America: In Translation, curated by Wendy Red Star, and An Indigenous Present, co-organized by artist Jeffrey Gibson and independent curator Jenelle Porter. In 2023, Aperture published A Kind of Prayer, the first-ever survey monograph dedicated to his work. A large collection of his work is currently on view in the 2026 Whitney Biennial, co-organized by Whitney curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer. Over the last decade, Metchewais has come to be seen as a significant contemporary Indigenous artist with a singular vision and style.
To learn more about the artist, visit the Kimowan Metchewais McLain Collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
About the Artist