“Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother” at MOA (Dec. 4 - Mar. 29)
We are thrilled to see the first announcement of the The Museum of Anthropology at UBC (MOA)’s world premiere of Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother, on display from December 4, 2025–March 29, 2026.
Co-curated by artist Jaad Kuujus–Meghann O’Brien (Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, Irish), Kate Hennessy (Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University), and Hannah Turner (Associate Professor, University of British Columbia), the exhibition features a varied collection of naaxiin (Chilkat) weavings and their digital translations. From intricately handwoven ceremonial regalia to digitally rendered reproductions, the exhibition is a space of reflection on themes of repetition, regeneration, and return.
“This exhibition is an expression of respect and love towards my ancestors and their ways of making, while looking forward to how new technologies can be used to represent our stories,” says O’Brien. “My hope is that visitors to Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother will experience the strength of the lands and cultures these works are connected to, even in the contemporary iterations. I believe that how we see can change the world. I hope visitors form a deeper connection to the foundational thread of ancestry—whether that be the lineages represented in the exhibition or to their own.”
From the MOA website:
Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother will feature more than a dozen works spanning the artist's career. A consistent thread throughout the exhibition is the use of mountain goat wool, a material of great importance to many Northwest Coast communities. The artist was first introduced to thigh spinning by SGaan Jaad–Sherri Dick (Haida/Kootenay), and furthered her skills through Lieut. George T. Emmons’ 1907 book The Chilkat Blanket. The drafted yarn on display in Clouds (2010) references Haida oral tradition and is a snapshot of the steps involved in transforming raw shorn fleece into yarn, used in several works featured in the exhibition.
Tracing the ancient threads of Northwest Coast weaving and spinning practices through the technologies of today, Jaad Kuujus’s art moves between generations, time, place, and mediums. Beyond the creation of replicas, her interconnected digital and material practice gives rise to descendant works — woven embodiments of kinship with the belongings, materials, and ancestors that inspire them.
Embodying repetition as a form of discipline and devotion, each stitch marks cycles of regeneration and return: to teachings, ancestral knowledge, and belonging within self and community. Through matriarchal lines, Jaad Kuujus’s art celebrates the threads that bind across generations, while imagining futures still to come.
Jaad Kuujus–Meghann O’Brien is a weaver of Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Irish descent. She is a student of the late Ga’axstalas–Kerri-Lynne Emily Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw/Haida), SGaan Jaad–Sherri Dick (Haida/Kootenay), and master Ts’msyen weaver Tsamiianbaan–William White. Working with hand-spun mountain goat wool, cedar bark, and collaboratively with digital media artists for the last decade, her practice bridges traditional knowledge and technical experimentation. Based in Vancouver, BC, she continues to explore the intersection between natural materials and techniques with contemporary fashion and transmediation of her original works into the digital. She travels globally to lecture and demonstrate, while emphasizing the value of contributing to the living ceremonial practices of Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw peoples.
Guest curators: Jaad Kuujus–Meghann O’Brien, Kate Hennessy (associate professor, Simon Fraser University), Hannah Turner (associate professor, University of British Columbia)