NATION
Sioux

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in 1979, Riel Benn is a recognized artist from the Birdtail Sioux First Nation in southwestern Manitoba. He dropped out of school to start painting at the age of 16, and his artistic career soon took off.

A self-taught multidisciplinary visual artist, he explores a variety of styles such as cubism, surrealism, pop-art and collage montage, while working in acrylic on canvas. His main inspirations are Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol.

In 1998, at the age of eighteen, Riel held his first solo exhibition at “The Voice of the Drum”, an international conference on Indigenous education at Brandon University in Manitoba.

He won the National YTV Achievement Award in 1999 and Manitoba’s Aboriginal Youth Achievement Award for Visual Art in 2001.

Among Riel’s most famous projects is “The Best Man”, presented at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in 2004. It shows his relationship to popular culture, his Indigenous heritage and his Roman Catholic upbringing. This project also fulfills his need to document the ups and downs of his personal relationships through the illustrated story of his alter ego, a clumsy, pessimistic prankster and failed romantic.

Riel Benn also participated with eight other Manitoba artists in a collaborative project to create sculptures and paintings, which were presented at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

In 2017, his “Classic Rock Series” series features classic rock songs and bands that depict Indigenous ideas, traditions and experiences. It was on display at the Ashukan Cultural Space (Sacred Fire Productions’ prior cultural space) in the heart of Old Montreal and at the Caisse Desjardins du Pekuakami temporary exhibition hall in Mashteuiatsh, Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec in 2019.

In 2022, Riel Benn produced “Sioux Funky”, an exhibition of 15 works with a cubist feel offering perspectives of Sioux historical figures and characters from Sioux legends.

To date, this prolific artist has created more than 1,000 works of art that have been sold to corporations, universities and private collectors around the world. His work has been exhibited in Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Australia.