Exhibitions —

april april is pleased to present soul meets body, an exhibition by Audie Murray. This is the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States.

There is an irony of appropriation that Audie Murray maneuvers, using materials with emotional stakes as ground for intervention. Even the exhibition’s title borrows from the Death Cab for Cutie song of the same name. The gesture calls us to inhabit a familiar promise of heart-on-sleeve sincerity.

I want to live where soul meets body
And let the sun wrap its arms around me, and
Bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing
And feel, feel what it's like to be new

Across sculpture, installation, and works on paper, the artist channels candor and refusal, combining humor and vulnerability with strategies of concealment. Raised on Treaty Four territory in Oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), Murray is Cree and Métis, with ties to the Meadow Lake (Flying Dust First Nation) and Lebret communities of Saskatchewan. Her work honors her relationship to her family and its ancestral tethers, while challenging settler-fetishism as it examines Indigeneity on display.

Beading, by definition, is both adornment and obfuscation—the substrate becomes eclipsed by the pattern that emerges atop. Murray’s work embodies this fact as a conceptual tenet, distinguishing itself from the long-practiced endeavor as inherently utilitarian. Instead, craftwork bestows an ulterior life upon the object, as if to charge embellishment with psychic weight.

Hands weave the fragile net of being and beads encrust it like tissue. In soul meets body, Murray enshrines durability among a cast of throwaway things: beer cans and bodily fluids, an old bralette and Marketplace merchandise awash in poignant anonymity. The notion of what’s residual is tantamount to aliveness—as a spider’s web connects all things. Murray insists on powers formed by the fabric of new skin on old flesh: hair, milk, heat, grease.

Audie Murray (b. 1993) is Métis and Cree from the Lebret and Meadow Lake communities located on Treaty 4 & 6 territories. She is a member of Flying Dust First Nation and is based in Oskana kâ-asastêki/Regina, Saskatchewan. Murray holds a BFA from University of Regina (2017) and a MFA from University of Calgary (2022).

Recent solo and two-artist exhibitions include Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2025); Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2025, 2024, 2019); Kenderdine Art Gallery at University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK (2024); Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK (2024); and Nanaimo Art Gallery, Nanaimo, BC (2021), among others.

The artist has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Does the Flower Hear the Bee? 15th Shanghai Biennale, curated by Kitty Scott, Shanghai, China (2025); An Indigenous Present, curated by Jeffrey Gibson and Janelle Porter, ICA Boston, MA (2025, touring); Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, curated by Candace Hopkins, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2023, touring); and Radical Stitch, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK (2022, touring).

Other group exhibitions include Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal, QC (2025); Pittsburgh Glass Center, Pittsburgh, PA (2024); Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK (2023); Remai Modern, Saskatoon, SK (2022); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2020); and Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB (2019), among many others.

Murray is on the 2026 Longlist for the Sobey Art Award, presented by the National Gallery of Canada, and in 2025 received the ohpinamake Prize for Indigenous Artists from University of Saskatchewan. Select public collections include the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, QC; Forge Project, Taghkanic, NY; and the Gochman Family Collection, New York, NY.

In Fall 2026, Murray will open a solo exhibition with Cooper Cole, Toronto and be included in the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial in Australia. Thank you to Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver for their collaboration on this exhibition.