Michelle Sylvestre. Artist.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation 2025 Scholar
In 2025 Sylvestre was one of 17 scholars selected from over 680 to receive the PETF PhD Scholarship. The award is considered to be Canadas premier PhD award for the social sciences and humanities. Sylvestre was chosen for her research-creation work with the Blackfoot community investigating the colonial and heteropatriarchal bias in AI LLMs through visual performance art and AI Literacy workshops. She will be a scholar for the years 2025-2028 inclusive.
Exhibition Artworks
Sylvestre is a transdisciplinary artist working intuitively with various mediums. While Sylvestre is often drawn to working with ceramics, textiles, and performance, she has worked with a variety of mediums. Materials are carefully considered for each work and chosen based on their innate qualities and ability to convey the message Sylvestre is striving for.
Public Art Practice
Sylvestre actively pursues a public art practice. You can view her work in the City of Lethbridge and Strathcona County.
Top right photo by Migueltzinta Solis
Abundant Intelligences & the Niitsitapii Pod
To best way to get regular updates on Sylvestre’s work with the Abundance Intelligences and Niitsitapi Pod is to connect with her on the socials below!
Abundant Intelligences
“Abundant Intelligences is an Indigenous-led research program that reimagines how to conceptualize and design Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on Indigenous Knowledge (IK) systems.” – AbInt Abundance Intelligence is a global network with established pods in Hawai’i, New Zealand, Montreal QC , Lethbridge AB, London ON, New York City, and community organizations in Vancouver BC, Winnipeg MB, Toronto ON, Hawai’i, and New Zealand.
Niitsitapi Pod
Sylvestre is honoured to be a part of the Abundance Intelligences network with the Niitsitapi Pod as a Researcher in Residence based in the Centre for Indigenous Art Research and Technology at the University of Lethbridge | Iniskim since 2024. Located in the heart of the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy the Pod works closely with Indigenous Elders, faculty partners, students, artists, and Community Partners. This Pod focuses on incorporating Niitsitapi stories into AI systems to understand the world, and how the underlying computational architectures might need to be reshaped to do so effectively. Research areas include but are not limited to: Indigenous digital media, Indigenous epistemologies, and Indigenous language and art.