Sept 27

Nancy Chiasson

Nancy Chiasson is a ceramic artist, grief peer facilitator, and embodiment practitioner based in Nova Scotia. Her multidisciplinary practice explores the intersection of material, memory, and meaning—often drawing from coastal landscapes, emotional residue, and the quiet rituals of everyday life. With a background in trauma-informed facilitation and yoga, her work bridges personal healing with public reflection. Informed by years of supporting others in grief, Nancy creates installations and objects that hold space for silence, longing, and the invisible threads that connect us. Her recent works invite viewers to move slowly, listen deeply, and engage with what is often left unsaid.

Signals to the Other Side

Artist Project

This quiet, glowing path invites you to slow down. Along the ground, a constellation of ceramic “message stones” is softly lit, each inscribed with a simple phrase—like “Still with me” or “Are you there?”—as if sent across time or distance. Visitors are encouraged to walk the path gently, reading the messages as they go. At the end, a small shrine-like structure offers a space to pause, reflect, or leave your own silent message.

This installation is inspired by grief, memory, and the deep human need to stay connected with those who are no longer physically near. Whether you’ve experienced a recent loss or simply want a moment of quiet connection, this piece invites you to listen inward and look upward. What messages might you send—or receive—in the dark?

Lumière Arts Festival 2025 // Constellations

Lumiere Arts Festival invites artists and community members to reflect on the concept of care.

In a polarized landscape, care can lap like a brook, or pound like large waves crashing ashore. To care is to tend, to root, to rebel, to share and to endure. This year, the festival is encouraging artists to submit works rooted in solidarity, with community building as resistance, that explores the need to care for ourselves, others, and the earth, both locally and globally. The Lumiere Arts Festival makes space for joy, contemporary art, and meaningful dialogue.

Land Acknowledgement

Lumière Arts Festival, on behalf of the board, the artists, and the communities we represent, acknowledges that we work, live and play in the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people, in Unama’ki Cape Breton, who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial.

We are grateful not only for the strong and ongoing stewardship of these lands we call home, but also for the stories, music, and art that Mi’kmaq people continue to create and share, carrying ancestral voices, sacred teachings, and legacies of interconnectedness and resilience forward into the present and on to the future.

We aspire to reflect that sense of connection between past and present in our festival. We are inspired by L’nu artists to foster connection and self-reflection in our work. We will work to ensure that art is accessible, inclusive, and integrated into public spaces so that we can share our collective stories, recognizing the challenges of our past and imagining brighter futures.

We are all Treaty people.