The Museum of Anthropology at UBC will present the world premiere of Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother from December 4, 2025, to March 29, 2026.
Co-curated by artist Jaad Kuujus–Meghann O’Brien (Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, Irish), alongside Kate Hennessy of Simon Fraser University and Hannah Turner of UBC, the exhibition brings together intricate naaxiin (Chilkat) weavings and their digital translations. Visitors will encounter handwoven ceremonial regalia, digitally rendered reproductions, and experimental hybrid works reflecting on repetition, regeneration, and return.
“This exhibition is an expression of respect and love towards my ancestors and their ways of making,” said O’Brien. “My hope is that visitors will experience the strength of the lands and cultures these works are connected to, even in the contemporary iterations.”
The show features more than a dozen pieces spanning O’Brien’s career, all tied together by her use of mountain goat wool, a material of deep cultural importance to Northwest Coast communities. Highlights include Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother (2020), a handwoven T-shirt made of mountain goat wool and yellow cedar bark; The Burden of Being an Echo (2025), a series of digital-jacquard robes created in collaboration with SFU’s Making Culture Lab; and Kuugan Jaad I & III (2015), fine weavings inspired by a 19th-century Haida bentwood dish in MOA’s collection.
The exhibition space will feature curved pink textile walls designed by Vancouver studio molo, creating what O’Brien calls “a relational rather than hierarchical understanding of the works.”
Born in Alert Bay and now based in Vancouver, O’Brien bridges traditional Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw weaving with modern digital processes, exploring continuity between nature, technology, and ancestral knowledge.
MOA will host a free opening night celebration on December 4, 2025, from 6pm to 9pm. More information is available at moa.ubc.ca.
Last modified: November 20, 2025
