Biography

Elizabeth LaPensée, is an award-winning designer, writer, and artist of games and comics. She is currently the Narrative Director at Twin Suns Corp. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 and was inducted into the Global Women in Games Hall of Fame in 2020. She was previously an associate professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and Michigan State University. She creates video games, interactive digital media, animation, visual art, and comics to express Indigenous ways of knowing, working in partnership with Indigenous communities. She is Irish, Anishnaabe, and Métis, and lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Nokomis Tends the Lands with Waters in Hand (2017)

Using the iconography of comics and games, Nokomis Tends the Lands with Waters in Hand (2017), centres Sharon Day – an Anishnaabe elder who runs Nibi Walks – as a grandmother caring for the water in a hopeful future. Water is deeply important to Elizabeth LaPensée’s practice, appearing as central in many of her artworks. It draws our attention to the Great Lakes region and their life-giving force. The image also invokes sacred time as it folds the past and future together, evoking the tradition of Indigenous futurity.