Danikah Chartier (b.2000) is a first-generation descendant of the Eskasoni Mi'kmaw Nation, a fine art photographer, curator, and museum educator. She is on a cultural reconnection journey and utilizes her art and museum work as pathways for community building. Chartier holds a BFA in Photography and Related Media from the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she obtained minors in Art History, Fashion History, Theory and Culture, and Film and Media Studies. She currently serves as a Wabanaki Curatorial Fellow at the Abbe Museum, the Teen Engagement Specialist at the Portland Museum of Art, and as a Gallery Educator at the Colby College Museum of Art.

 

Danikah utilizes her photography as a tool for self-cultivation and spiritual enlightenment. In previous projects, she unlearned shame by making a series of environmental nude self-portraits, created intimate self-portraits with strangers as exposure therapy for her social anxiety, and photographed herself crying after somatic meditation to feel her emotions in her body and release them. She describes herself as "a performance artist who doesn't like an audience" and describes her photographic practice as a "spiritual dance"; she follows her intuition and connects deeply with her emotions to tell stories through her body and the medium of time. Danikah’s most recent work reflects her journey with her sister, mother, and maternal grandmother, a survivor of the Schubenacadie Indian Residential School, to unlearn colonial teachings and deepen their relationships with each other, their culture, community, Ancestors, and Wabanaki homelands.