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Beads in the Blood / mīgisak mīgohk: A Ruth Cuthand Retrospective, curated by Swampy Cree curator Felicia Gay, looks at Cuthand’s career from 1983 to 2024. It comprises new and past works, including video, mixed-media installation, and photography, and collaborative story-work between Cuthand and Gay. Cuthand’s life’s work is to tell stories that live beyond the aural realm and move into the visual. Story lives within the bead/mikis (mee-gis); it lives in our bodies, in our blood. Cuthand’s interest in beads as signifier, medium, and tool for decolonization began with Trading Series in 2009, an award-winning suite of twelve images of viruses. Eleven of the viruses were transmitted to Indigenous people through European contact during the process of colonization, while one virus travelled from Indigenous territory to Europe. Cuthand believes the bead is alive, and because it is alive, it is a story-keeper.