Discipline Category: Beading

Vi Houssin is a transgender beadwork artist and drag performer. Her family is of white settler and Red River Métis ancestry. Her Métis family names are Ritchot, Poitras, Larence and Plante, and her ancestors held scrip in St. Vital and St. Boniface. She is a proud member of the Two-Spirit Michif Local and a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. Vi works and lives in Winnipeg, Canada on Treaty 1 territory where she was born and raised.

Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Claire Johnston is a Red River Métis and settler visual artist based in Winnipeg/Treaty 1 Territory. As a Two-Spirit Piitoshi-iteeyihtam (one who thinks differently), Claire engages in creating slow meticulous floral beadwork that responds relationally to the past and present.

Claire is an artist and team member with the Re*Storying Autism project (Queen's University), which works to combat Western, colonial, capitalist, and biomedical understandings of Autism through Autistic storytelling and narratives that affirm difference as desirable and needed.

As part of Canada’s official entry to the 2025 Venice Biennale, Claire was selected as a fellow to engage in research on Venetian seed beads and their connection to Métis beadworkers past and present. Their artwork has been acquired by permanent collections at the University of Manitoba (2024) and has exhibited at Urban Shaman (Winnipeg 25’), Rosemary Gallery (Winnipeg 24’), Tangled Arts (Toronto 22’, 24’), Festival du Voyageur (Winnipeg 24’), Venice Biennale of Architecture (Venice 23’) and The Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art (Vancouver 22’).

Claire is a Sundancer, a step-parent, an auntie, and an MMF citizen with membership with the Two-Spirit Michif Local.