Indigenous multimedia artist who draws from roots – @NFTipi

The indigenous multimedia artist Tipi is Oji-Cree lives in a remote community in Northern Canada. Her work, inspired by her roots, has served as a creative outlet. She was drawn to TV sci-fi shows as a kid. Sci-fi served as her refuge — an alternative universe that she longed to be in, in order to escape the traumatic living situation of her upbringing in foster families.

As she learned about the history of the Canadian government and the native communities via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she became more of an activist and channeled those feelings into her art. The trauma she has lived through, and the struggle of her ancestors, is the fuel that keeps her creating. 

She started creating the tipi-fi images as a part of Indigenous Futurism — a way to show the traditional mixed with her love of sci-fi. She uses a variety of AI text-to-art generation tools to create the images, but a lot of time and manipulation goes into them. The color palette is a reference to wherever she is connecting that piece to. So if there are neon/cyber punk colors, it is a connection to her friends in Japan. Or if she is connecting with her friends in India/Pakistan, she is using more pinks, blues and greens.