We make space to gather community through music, food, and movement that involves intergenerational nourishment, care and criticality. What if House is a Feeling expands ROSEMARY Gallery’s arts-based inquiry into how the people and places we come from inform the works of Mahlet Cuff, Melody McIvor, Rhayne Vermette, Aikaterini Zegeye-Gebrehiwot and Hagere Selam shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot. Through their work, these artists respond to the questions: Who are the people and places that continue to hold us up and, How do we involve our families and community in specific and nuanced ways? Drawing upon archive, film and sound these artists help to visually and sonically attend to the underlying qualities and connections that hold together culture and community.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Mahlet Cuff is a multidisciplinary artist and arts cultural worker based in Winnipeg Manitoba (Treaty 1). Through an ethnographic based practice they are interested in themes of memory and erasure in order to make sense of the Black Queer diasporic communities they are a part of and engage with. By using Black feminist citational praxis and interrogating their own personal familial archives, they create reimagined Black Queer Diasporic dance and music histories by visually and sonically collaging moving images and sound. Cuff’s work has been screened and exhibited nationally and internationally. Their video piece titled UTOPIA (an ode to the past, present and future) was shortlisted for the 2025 FluxusMuseum Prize for Experimental Video. They are the Platform Photography Award 2026 Winner and their first solo exhibition will be taking place in March 2027. Cuff holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Winnipeg. mahletcuff.com

Primarily self-taught, Rhayne Vermette’s work emphasizes an interference of image through collage, photography and analog filmmaking. Themes of place, time and rhythm are expressed through opulent layers of fiction, animation, reenactments and divine interruption. Deeply rooted in Manitoba, Rhayne frequently enlists the talent of her loved ones and community in the making of her films and photography. Ste. Anne (2021), Rhayne’s first feature narrative featuring some of her own family members from Ste. Anne, Manitoba, received critical acclaim and accrued a number of accolades including TIFF’s Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film. In 2024, Rhayne was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s preeminent prize for contemporary visual artists. She released her second feature, Levers, in 2025. The film exhibited internationally and won the "Best International Film" prize at Cinéma Du Réel in Paris.

shimby is an artist and administrator who currently works and resides between Treaty 1 and Treaty 4 territories. They have received funding from municipal, provincial and national arts councils as well as awards from local and transnational arts organizations. Their practice engages with themes of place and its abstraction from a diasporic, queer and feminist perspective. Their experimental film work has been reviewed in Blackflash magazine and the Winnipeg Free Press while screening the world over. Their art writing has appeared in the Capilano Review as well as in the form of commissioned essays at artist run centres in Winnipeg.

They have served as Executive Director at the Saskatchewan Filmpool, Co-Director of WNDX Festival of Moving Image and guest editor of the forthcoming Art&Wonder publication.

Melody McKiver, acclaimed Anishinaabe composer, violist, and media artist.  They work with contemporary classical and Indigenous music scenes, widely recognized for seamlessly blending classical viola and electronic music to forge a distinct genre of Anishinaabe composition. McKiver serve as an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Music (tenure-track) within the Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba. A proud member of the Obishikokaang Lac Seul First Nation (Treaty #3), they are also a part of the Mizi'iwe Aana Kwat (LGBTQ2S+ Council). McKiver was awarded the prestigious 2020 Robert Fleming Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts. Their portfolio includes the debut EP Reckoning and the original motion picture soundtrack for the award-winning documentary Returning Home.

Established in 2022, ROSEMARY Gallery is a roving project that emerges from the belief that art is rooted in our relationships to others in our neighbourhoods, communities, and cities. Makers, artists, curators, thinkers, mothers, community members, and collaborators Jaimie Isaac (Anishinaabekwe member of Sagkeeng First Nation) and Suzanne Morrissette (Red River Métis, citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation), co-direct ROSEMARY GALLERY, the name ROSEMARY blends the first names of Suzanne’s and Jaimie’s grandmothers — Rose Morrissette (Richard) and Dr. Elder Mary Courchene — in recognition of the strength and vision of their matriarchal leadership.

Image: What if We Kept it Between Us? (Filmstill; Film Freeway), Mahlet Cuff, 2026