Who's Telling the Story?

ARTIST STATEMENT

I created this collage to visualize how colonial violence continues to shape the present, even when it is often treated as something confined to the past. Through layered materials—including magazine clippings, newspaper articles, and paint—I explore how institutions like the criminal justice and child welfare systems obscure their colonial foundations by framing harms such as residential schools and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) as isolated events rather than part of an ongoing structure.

As I assembled the piece, I became increasingly interested in the relationship between time, memory, and power. The fragmented and overlapping layers reflect how colonial histories are never fully separate from the present but continue to shape lived realities. I was drawn to the tension between what is made visible and what remains hidden—how some narratives are emphasized while others are buried beneath institutional language and ideas of reconciliation.

By reworking found materials, I wanted to interrupt familiar narratives and encourage viewers to look more closely at how colonial structures remain active and normalized in everyday systems. Creating this piece also prompted me to consider resistance—not only as opposition, but also as remembrance, refusal, and the assertion of alternative futures.

RENEE LEBEAU

Renee Lebeau is a 3rd-year student completing a Philosophy and Sociology Double Major at Queen’s University. Her research and creative practice examine themes of institutional critique, epistemological decolonization, and the systemic reproduction of colonial power through state governance through the perspective of an ally. Situated at the intersection of critical theory, criminology, and philosophical concepts of the self, her work explores questions of agency and moral living alongside analyses of the criminal justice system and Western institutions as a power vacuum. Drawing on Indigenous philosophy and critical criminology, she examines how carceral governance perpetuates colonial relations of power, the limitations of reform-based justice models, and Indigenous futurisms as transformative alternatives.

Her current project, Who’s Telling the Story? examines the persistence of colonialism within institutions and government through a research-creation project that employs critical theory analysis, presented in a zine-inspired, multi-media collage. This work engages with settler-colonial studies, criminology, and Indigenous futurisms, contributing to ongoing discussions about justice, Indigenous cultural resurgence, epistemological decolonization, and the impact of institutional structures. 

THANKS + ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Dolleen Manning for her support and encouragement in producing my first research-creation project, and for her suggestion to enter my piece into the exhibition, and to my best friend, Austin Campbell, for watching over my shoulder for months, encouraging me that the vision always comes to life.