ARTISTS’
RESIDENCY
RIDING MOUNTAIN
SUPPORTED IN PARTNERSHIP BY
Riding Mountain
Artists’ Residency
About the Residency.
The Riding Mountain Artists’ Residency is a collaboration between the Manitoba Arts Council, Parks Canada, and WCA.
The residency offers professional artists an opportunity to step away from their busy lives and concentrate on their artistic practice in a beautiful natural setting of Riding Mountain National Park.
The residency is housed in the historic Deep Bay log cabin, built in 1934, on the shoreline of Clear Lake. The one-bedroom, fully-furnished cabin is situated about two kilometres from the town of Wasagaming.
Wasagaming Community Arts works with residency artists to create opportunities for them to interact with, and share their work with, residents and visitors of Wasagaming, Riding Mountain National Park, and the surrounding area. Take a look below to see the full line-up of artist talks, workshops, and demonstrations.
Interested in Applying?
The Manitoba Arts Council manages applications for the residency through their Learn — Residencies grant.
Application Deadline for 2027 is January 15, 2027. Please check out MAC’s website using the links below:
Questions?
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The residency program runs from June through September.
Each artist’s residency stay is two-weeks.
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Yes. Selected artists are awarded a $2500 grant from Manitoba Arts Council for their time during the residency.
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The cottage is located on private property, and signage encourages visitors to respect the artist’s privacy.
However, because the cottage is situated on the shore of Deep Bay, artists should be aware that the nearby beach and dock are used by the public. The area is generally quieter in the spring and fall, while July and August tend to be busier, especially on weekends.
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The residency cottage is located on the shore of Clear Lake at Deep Bay in Riding Mountain National Park. It is approximately 2 km from the Wasagaming townsite — about a 5-minute drive or a 35-minute walk.
2026 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Sat, June 13 | 2:00 pm
Artist Talk with Geneviève Pelletier
Biography: Geneviève Pelletier is an Indigenous creator and stage director from the Red River Métis Nation in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, located on the Land of the ancestral Treaty 1 territory. From 2012 to 2025, displaying both passion and vision, she assumed the artistic and general direction of the Théâtre Cercle Molière, the oldest French-language theatre company in Canada that celebrated its centennial in 2025. Under her leadership, the theatre not only strengthened its commitment to cultural diversity, but also focused on ecology, audience renewal and theatrical creation with strong local roots.
Biographie française : Geneviève Pelletier est une créatrice et metteure en scène autochtone, de la Nation Métis de la Rivière Rouge à Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada), située sur le territoire ancestral du traité n°1. De 2012 à 2025, elle a dirigé avec passion et vision la direction artistique et générale du Théâtre Cercle Molière, la plus ancienne compagnie de théâtre de langue française au Canada, qui a célébré son centenaire en 2025. Sous sa direction, le théâtre a non seulement renforcé son engagement envers la diversit culturelle, mais a également mis l’accent sur écologie, le renouvellement des publics, et la création théâtrale ancrée dans le territoire.
Residency Project: During her stay in the Deep Bay Cabin, she will be working on a French translation of Café Daughter, a major work of contemporary Indigenous theatre written by Kenneth T. Williams.
Geneviève Pelletier: “This residency is an essential step in improving the dramatic quality of the translation by refining the work’s oral structure, rhythm, silences and nuances. It is a project that requires painstaking attention to detail, which requires time, listening and close attention to identify and immerse oneself in the languages that inhabit the script.”
Artist Talk is free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Link
Check out Geneviève’s Interview with MAC
Follow Geneviève Online
Sat, June 27 | 2:00pm
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Author Reading & Workshop with Cale Plett
Biography: Cale Plett is a nonbinary, genderfluid writer who lives on Treaty One Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their YA novels span everything from high school rock bands to nightmares in the woods to reality TV gone wrong, and their poetry and short fiction can be found in a whole variety of journals. Whatever genre they’re writing, they try to create spaces where queer characters can exist safely within their identities. Wavelength, a runaway pop star YA romance, is their debut novel from Groundwood Books. Their second YA novel, The Saw Mouth, is coming out May 12, 2026 from Delacorte Press, to be followed by another standalone YA horror, novel Stranglehold, in fall 2027. Cale Plett is represented by Amy Tompkins at Transatlantic Agency.
Residency Project:
Cale Plett: “Some of my current project is still under wraps for public discussion, but I'll be working on research and early draft stages of a new queer YA horror novel set in a rural location very similar to the one I'll be staying in. It's going to feature simultaneous forward and backward narratives, so that the beginning of the monster's arc dovetails with the end of the protagonist's arc. Lots of scary lakes at night and places that are too quiet. A very strange monster that's not what it seems at first and a whole bunch of religious trauma. I can promise it will be creepy, disgusting, and make you cry, maybe all at the same time!”
Author Reading & Workshop is free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.
Follow Cale Online:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Sat, July 11 | 2:00 pm
Artist Talk with Oluuji
Biography: Aderemilekun “Oluuji” Olusoga is a Nigerian-born visual artist based in Canada, working across painting, installation, textile, photography, and media arts. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience, and approaches each medium as a way of thinking through different conditions of experience, allowing ideas to shift form depending on their context.
His multidisciplinary practice explores diaspora as a relational identity, examining the systems of memory that influence how identity is constructed and maintained across diasporic experience, and navigating the tension between the desire to belong and the need to remain connected to one’s cultural origins. His work draws from both institutional archives and quieter, everyday forms of archiving that exist in objects, garments, photographs, and emerging cloud-based systems of memory.
Oluuji has exhibited his work across galleries and festivals in Canada. He was one of the artists selected to design concrete bison sculptures for a public art project in Manitoba, an initiative recognized by the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba. He has received several grants and residencies, including the Scott Leroux Fund for Media Arts Exploration in 2024.
As an active member of Winnipeg’s artistic community and a co-founder of the So Basically collective, Oluuji is committed to fostering dialogue and visibility for African and diasporic artists through collective work, workshops, and collaborative projects.
Residency Project: During his stay in the Deep Bay Cabin, he will be working on a slow image-making project responding to the environment of the Park, combining landscape photography, self-portraiture, personal items, and found materials.
Oluuji: “I hope the park influences the project by slowing down my usual ways of working and making me more responsive to environment, material, and process,” says Oluuji. “Much of my practice already involves layering, experimentation, and attentiveness to context, but I think working within the conditions of Riding Mountain will push that further by allowing the landscape, weather, and pace of daily life to shape creative decisions more directly.”
Artist Talk free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.
Follow Oluuji Online:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Thurs, July 23 | 7:00 pm
Artist Talk + Demonstration with Brendon Ehinger
Biography: Brendon Ehinger (he/him) is a multi-instrumentalist and sound artist living on Treaty 2 territory (Brandon Manitoba). In his ephemeral performances (occasionally under the moniker A Moon Shape Noise) Ehinger uses modular synthesis to manipulate the sounds of traditional instruments, live audio input, and field recordings, creating expansive semi-improvised soundscapes in real time. His work explores themes of acoustic ecology and his own positionality in relation to identity, land, territory, and the environment.
Brendon has performed in Canada and abroad including at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon), send + receive "Alleyways" series (Winnipeg), Nuit Blanche XYZ (Saskatoon), Neutral Ground ARC (Regina), and Warte Für Kunst (Kassel Germany). His most recent piece “Four Eras” was performed this past May at Cluster Festival for Integrated Arts in Winnipeg. He is also the founder and director of Prairie Wires Modular Festival of Electronic Sound, an occasional experimental music festival held in Brandon Manitoba that celebrates Canadian artists using modular synthesis and processes.
Residency Project:
Brendon Ehinger: ““Land Suites” is the working title for this new body of work which I will be starting on during my residency. I plan to find areas of RMNP that I have not yet visited and spend time with the land. Guided by principals of “take only photographs, leave only footprints” I will engage in active listening exercises and document my experiences with minimal intrusion. Back in the Deep Bay Cabin I will review and reflect on the documentation and experiment with musical sketches that will serve as the basis for the creation of the “Land Suites” graphic scores.”
Artist Talk and Demonstration are free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.
Follow Brendon Online:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Sat, August 8 | 2:00 pm
Biography: Sharanpal Ruprai, PhD is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dr. Ruprai is an internationally recognized writer, her début poetry collection, Seva was shortlisted for the Stephen G. Stephansson Award for Poetry by the Alberta Literary Awards in 2015. Her most recent collection, Pressure Cooker Love Bomb was celebrated many times in 2019 and 2020, as it was shortlisted for four awards. She was selected to be the Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program housed in the Department of English at the University of Calgary in 2019-2020. She was honoured to be awarded The Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal by The Writers’ Guild of Alberta.
Residency Project:
Sharanpal Ruprai: “What I hope to achieve with this residency is to walk away with a completed first draft of a book-length poetry manuscript. The Riding Mountain residency will allow me the opportunity to focus on the task of writing and will provide me with some physical space to write outside my office environment and my hectic day job! I need a bit of isolation for this project to focus, while being immersed in nature will inspire how my words take shape on the page. My plan for the Deep Bay cabin, is to write and layout the poetry book. I have four sections: “Auntyji,” “Five Metres (long poem),” “Braid Us Whole” and “Oonth Means Camel.” I make specific artistic choices around including religious elements. For example, I use the turban as a gender disrupter in my poetry; all genders wear turbans in my long poem “Five Metres,” which comprises the second section. In the third section, all genders have long hair and braids in my poem, “Braid Us Whole,” a poem that links together Sikh children and the pressures of wearing keeping their hair. The title poem of this section delves into the connection between genders and how the fight for bodily autonomy, and struggle for language are braided together. With this collection, I have a very specific audience in mind, that is, Sikh/Punjabi Diasporic communities.”
Author Reading & Talk are free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.
Author Reading + Talk with Sharanpal Ruprai
Follow Sharanpal Online:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Sat, August 22 | 2:00 pm
Artist Talk with Derek Dunlop
Biography: Derek Dunlop is a research-based interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and art historian whose work examines how landscapes are shaped through cultural, aesthetic, and political processes. He completed a PhD in Art History at the University of Toronto in 2025, where his research examined Romanticism, ecology, and the production of nature within settler colonial contexts. His work has been exhibited across Canada and the United States, and his current project, Found Landscapes, explores how landscapes are represented and naturalized through visual and textual culture.
Residency Project:
Derek Dunlop: “During my time at Deep Bay, I will be working on an artist book called Found Landscapes. The book examines how landscapes in Canada are shaped through visual and textual culture. Through photography, archival materials, found language, and image–text pairings, the project explores sites often understood as “natural” or neutral, revealing how ideas of beauty, conservation, and leisure shape how land and environments are understood. By disrupting assumptions that nature exists outside history and culture, the work invites more critical and reflective ways of seeing and relating to place.”
Artist Talk is free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.
Follow Derek Online:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Sat, September 5 | 2:00 pm
Artist Talk with Daisy Wu
Biography: Daisy Wu is a photo-based artist from Nantong, China, currently based in Winnipeg, Canada, on Treaty 1 Territory. She graduated from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art in 2023, where she awarded an Undergraduate Research Award. Wu participated Residencies at the Banff Centre of Arts and Creativity and Plug In ICA. Her work has recently been exhibited at MAWA and aceartinc. as part of the FLASH photographic festival. Wu has been teaching workshops at local galleries in Winnipeg and upcoming workshops with galleries and non-profit organizations in summer of 2026. Her practice explores themes of family, belonging, and immigration through photography, mixed media, and installation.
Residency Project:
Daisy Wu: “During the residency, I will continue working on the project I began last year. The project includes a variety of works, including screen prints, sculptures, and photographs that address the stories of Chinese immigrants, including my family’s immigration history. I will further experiment with found materials and photographs I have gathered from friends and other members of the Chinese community. I will also explore ways of translating my research and personal reflections into material forms.”
Artist Talk free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Wasagaming Community Arts. Google Event Listing.
Follow Daisy Online:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Sat, September 19 | 2:00 pm
Writing Workshop with Sharon Hamilton
Biography: Sharon J. Hamilton has taught English from elementary school through to doctoral level during her forty-year career. She has a PhD in language and literacy from the University of London (UK) and has participated in writing seminars at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the Faber Academy, London. Additionally, she’s owned, trained, and shown shelties, and was a member of the Winnipeg Area Shetland Sheepdog Association. Hamilton lives in Winnipeg with her partner and two shelties. She has a son, an actor and playwright, who lives in Toronto.
Residency Project:
Sharon Hamilton: “At Deep Bay Cabin, I will begin drafting The Box Where the Smiles Were Kept, which focuses on a five-year period, 1945-1949. During these years, the Children’s Aid Society (now Child and Family Services) transitioned from an orphanage – adoption model to a receiving home-foster care model. The post-war baby boom flooded the already strained facilities, creating a vortex wherein orphaned, unwanted or abused and neglected infants, toddlers, and children seriously outnumbered spaces available for them. This book will blend historical fact, memory, and storytelling into a work of historical fiction.”
Writing Workshop free to attend. All are welcome.
Location: Dauphin Public Library. Google Event Listing.