Sept 27

Melanie Barnett

Melanie Barnett is a ceramicist whose work draws upon themes of mycology, agronomy, and climate science to create sci-fi worldbuilding experiences that speculate upon the future. She holds an MFA from NSCAD University and a BFA Honours in Ceramics from IshKaabatens Waasa Gaa Inaabateg Department of Visual Art, Brandon University. Barnett’s practice is currently based on Treaty 7 Territory in Medicine Hat, AB

This is Your BioSuit

Spotlight Project

What would it feel like to wear your ecosystem? This is Your BioSuit is a spin-off project of artist Melanie Barnett’s worldbuilding project, “it looked like your BioSuit”. Guests are invited to collaborate on a large-scale, community- based collage of a life-sized BioSuit: a piece of clothing made of a living ecosystem.

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.