04/24/2026
We love our new art at the Community Food Hub! With a unique mural technique, Brianna painted a beautiful story about the space. Learn about what inspired her:
Brianna LaPlante, wâhkôhtowin
For the wâhkôwîcihiwêwin Reconciliation Room, I wanted to honour the celestial forms that inform our everyday life to manifest togetherness and fulfillment for all that takes place in this space. This accessible room for the community at the BMO asahtowikamik Community Food Hub will host many intimate gatherings in its lifetime. Using line, colour, and flowing composition, I conjured a conceptually engaging story around the theme of Reconciliation, and the beauty that comes from collaboration.
The story is a visual depiction of where English fails me to symbolize what wâhkôwîcihiwêwin means to me. This is a place of coming together to listen, share, pray, feed, and so much more, depending on how the community acts on our collective needs. Reconciliation is not just a word to throw around, it’s a commitment to showing up in respect to all our relations, honouring one another and the life around us and beyond us. The Hunter/Trickster and the Seven Sisters constellations appear in the night sky during the winter, a hard time for many of us. The celestial bison represents the feeding of all people as a provider and sacred being. To represent these ancestors, I used Grandmother colours to adorn the window as the canvas with the elusive figures. The space lines trickle down into our atmosphere, into the fluid-like linework that showers our roots. I hope for this space to truly embody the value and love of wâhkôwîcihiwêwin.
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Special thanks to Jada Yee for facilitating, and to Innovation Federal Credit Union for making this space possible.
Brii Taylor Laine