CHARLENE VICKERS: Doodem: Her Sacred Structures Hold Tight
November 14th – December 13th, 2025
Opening Friday, Nov 14th, 4-7pm
Macaulay + Co. is thrilled to present a solo exhibition of work by Vancouver-based Anishinaabe artist Charlene Vickers. Doodem: Her Sacred Structures Hold Tight continues Vickers’ exploration of memory, and Indigenous experience within urban space. This new series of sewn assemblages act as material scrapbooks, mind maps, and memory catchers, in which bead poles echo the body and divine spirit energy, acting as smudge or medicine poles, flower poles, doodem*, and sacred body structures that “hold tight.”
Working with synthetic, store bought materials such as shipping tubes, corrugated cardboard, yarn, beads and craft felt, Vickers explores how the natural world is often reimagined or replaced in contemporary urban life. This playful sense of materiality is also a nod in part to the artist’s longtime reflections on cultural frameworks of beauty and value.
“My body has been moving through an urban landscape that is at times very intense, tight, narrow, and chaotic. I find solace in these materials, in the acts of gathering, beading, wrapping, and protecting as a process in which the hidden inner spaces of spirit and memory settle. It is my making sense of the world, enabling a sacred space to emerge/reside. The spaces and the seams that hold them in place keep balance and lend me mental strength. I can sense and feel resilience, power, fragility, and sacredness.”
– Charlene Vickers
