Erik Mandawe
www.londonarts.ca/artist-in-residence
Erik Mandawe (ᐱᔦᓯᐊᐧᐠ) is the current Artist in Residence at the London Arts Council. He as an Indigenous artist, musician, filmmaker, storyteller, and academic. His family comes from the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in northern Alberta, and he has lived in London since 2013.
Erik worked for 14 years as a professional actor in films, television show, music videos, and commercials while growing up in Toronto. He went on to earn an Honours BSc in Medical Anthropology from the University of Toronto (2010), going on to work in addictions and mental health in urban and rural Indigenous communities. He later returned to school to pursue his passion for arts and music and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music at Western University (2017), earning the UWO Gold Medal for graduating with the highest grade-point-average in his program.
Erik’s artistic practice is informed by his passion for communication, worldview, travel, and land-based teachings. Cultural identity and reconciliation are significant in his practice, as he takes a contemporary mixed media approach to his work that embodies a way of being that is informed by his experiences as an urban nêhiyaw (ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ) while being rooted in traditional teachings and Indigenous ways of knowing.
Erik is an avid athlete in volleyball, basketball, climbing, and marathon-running. He is a Sundancer in the Rattlechild Sundance Lodge, and is a current as a medical student in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University (2021).
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