Summer-Harmony Twenish is a queer, non-binary artist and loving dog parent from Kitigan Zibi whose creative energy is as bold and multifaceted as the name they carry. Their work, featured as part of the MADAMIKANA project at the Centre d’entraide et d’amitié in Senneterre, reflects a mix of memory, humour, resistance, and instinct.
Growing up surrounded by strong women—educators, artists, aunties—Summer was raised in a matriarchal current that shaped their sense of self, both as a person and as a craftsperson. “I was always telling my students ‘Your art doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be something that is important to you and that you like to do.’ And then I kind of started taking my own advice.”
Originally a student of art history, they soon realized their heart was in the doing, the creating, not just the studying. They left university to teach art and eventually returned to it as a personal practice—through digital illustration, beadwork, rug tufting, or whatever medium calls to them next. “If it’s interesting to me and I can work with my hands, I want to try it.”
Summer describes themselves as chaotic, funny, and full of love. Their creative process reflects that: they start their mornings at the drawing table with loose sketches—sometimes on paper, sometimes with watercolour, sometimes digital—and let the work unfold from emotion and instinct. Anger, for instance, sometimes becomes the fire that fuels their images.
Their pride in their Anishinaabe roots is central. Outspoken and deeply feminist, they use their voice and their art to make space, challenge the norms established, and represent the fluidity and diversity of Indigenous existence today. Time spent in the bush with their grandmother and cousins helped ground them in tradition and taught them the importance of land, care, and kinship.
