Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a visual artist, author, and public speaker. His work has been seen in public spaces, museums, galleries and private collections across globe. Institutional collections include the British Museum, the Quai Branly Museum, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Humboldt Forum.
Yahgulanaas has a long history of environmental activism and political involvement. For many years he was an elected Chief Councillor of the Old Massett Village Council and a member of the Council of the Haida Nation.

WWW mny.ca IG yahgulanaas

Early life

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas was born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia in 1954 and grew up alongside Delkatla, near the fishing village of Masset on Haida Gwaii, off the north coast of British Columbia. He is a descendant of the influential Haida artists, Isabella Edenshaw, Charles Edenshaw and Delores Churchill
As a child, Yahgulanaas was a comic book reader and cartoonist. A young artist, he covered the walls and ceilings of his bedroom with drawings.
At age 22, he began to direct his artistic endeavors outward, to effect change in the community and in relation to broader movements of environmental activism.

Art career

Training

In 1978, Yahgulanaas his formal training in the classical forms of Haida art; Yahgulanaas became a full-time artist after several decades working to protect the biocultural diversity of Haida Gwaii.

Haida manga

While Yahgulanaas trained under master carvers, his brief exposure to Chinese brush techniques with Cantonese artist Cai Ben Kwan in the 1990s encouraged a departure from the typical expressions of the Haida art form and the development of a new genre of narrative art called "Haida manga".
Haida Manga blends Pacific Northwest Indigenous iconographies and framelines with the graphic dynamism of Asian manga. Haida Manga is committed to hybridity as a force that opens a third space for critical engagement. It offers a way of viewing and engaging with social issues as it seeks participation, dialogue, reflection, and action.

Sculpture

Yahgulanaas's works in metal include commissions from the British Museum, The City of Vancouver and the 2010 Winter Olympics organizing committee. In 2015, his sculpture Sei, depicting a sei whale, was unveiled at the Vancouver International Airport. In January 2016, his sculpture Yelthadaas from the Coppers From the Hood series joined the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This work was put on display in 2017. The piece hangs in Gallery 399, between the Modern and Contemporary Art wing and the Rockefeller Wing, where contemporary art borders Indigenous art.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

‘’ Diaries after a Flood’’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada, 2024Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas -- Traveling the Museum, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2007Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB, Canada, 2009Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and Edward Burtynsky, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB, Canada, 2009Emily Carr and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Masters Gallery, Calgary, AB, Canada, 2013Old Growth, grunt gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2013The Seriousness of Play, Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2016A Tale of Two Shamans, Haida Gwaii, Canada, 2018Making Mischief, Gallery Jones, Vancouver, Canada, 2021New Works, Madrona Gallery, Victoria, Canada, 2022

Group exhibitions

Skung Gwaii Robe, Haida Gwaii Museum at Qay'llnagaay, Haida Gwaii, Canada, 2002Raven Travelling, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2006What Use Art History?, Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, Penticton, BC, Canada, 2008Challenging Traditions, Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, BC, Canada, 2010Visions of British Columbia: A Landscape Manual, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2010Haida Made: New Collaborations in Design, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2010Continuum: Vision and Creativity on the Northwest Coast, Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2010Beat Nation, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2012Tokyo Design Week, Milan, Italy, 2015Sding ḴʼawX̱angs, McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal, Canada, 2019Comic Sans, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, 2022Outsider Art Fair, Metropolitan Pavilion, New York City, USA, 2023Two Squares Equal One with at 35 Barlett, San Francisco, 2023New Terrains: Contemporary Native American Art, Phillips, New York City, USAD'un océan à l'autre, cap sur la bande dessinée canadienne / From Coast to Coast, Canadian Comics on the Move, Angoulême International Comics Festival, Angoulême, France, 2024XIÁM, Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2024

Published works

JAJ: a Haida Manga,,
Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga,,
War of the Blink,, Old Growth: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Liz Park, ed.,,
The Canoe He Called Loo Taas,,
The Little Hummingbird,
The Declaration of Interdependence,
The Canoe He Called Loo Taas,,
Red: A Haida Manga,,
Flight of the Hummingbird: a parable for the environment,,
Hachidori
A Lousy Tale
The Last Voyage of the Black Ship, '',
A Tale of Two Shamans, ,''
No Tankers, No T'anks. Volume 1 of the Tales of Raven series.

Hachidori has sold over 100,000 copies in Japan, with a single-day record sale of 20,000 copies. Flight of the Hummingbird, first published in North America and now available in five languages, is also a bestseller and includes essays contributed by the Dalai Lama and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. Declaration of Interdependence, written by David Suzuki, was illustrated by Yahgulanaas.