Highness Contemporary Art & Design

Contemporary Art Agency & Design Firm

Volume 2 Summer 2026

Aambe Giigidodaa Debwewim (Let Us Speak The Truth)

By Artist: Leigh Simpson-Ahwanaquot

The past twelve months have marked a period of quiet acceleration for our firm. It has been defined by deliberate evolution, expanded activity, and a more clearly articulated curatorial position.

Our work has long been grounded in the understanding that contemporary art is shaped through the convergence of cultural discourse, interdisciplinary practice, and emerging forms of production. Over the past year, this understanding has informed the launch of Highness Spectra Creation Lab, a digital platform developed to extend artwork into new territories of engagement, access, and scale.

Emerging from the same foundational principles as our Indigenous Creation Lab, Spectra Lab is oriented toward the future of contemporary practice. Together, these initiatives create a framework through which artists, technologists, and diverse cultural perspectives can intersect, generating new possibilities for how art is conceived, produced, and experienced.

Across each project and partnership, our approach

Nigel Nolan, Director with Amana Manc CEO at CANFAR Gala 2025 remains consistent: to operate at the leading edge of contemporary practice while advancing a model of Collaborative Prosperity™ that supports artists and cultural producers in meaningful and sustainable ways.

This moment also marks the relaunch of highnessglobal.com, which now more fully reflects both our current work and our broader direction. It is a more precise articulation of our projects, curatorial interests, and the professional and philanthropic contexts in which we are working.

As we move forward with clarity and purpose, we invite you to move forward with us.

Warmest wishes, Amana Manori

Amana, Manori

Highnessglobal.com

A reimagined hub for Highness Global's latest projects, spanning art, design, digital media, immersive experiences, creative technology, brand activations, and Indigenous-led artistry.

GIDINA WENDIMINI

(WE ARE ALL RELATED)

JACKIETRAVERSE.COM @artbyjackietraverse JACKIE TRAVERSE

The City of Kitchener commissions Jackie Traverse for large scale public artwork at the recreation complex at RBJ Schlegal Park.

In Gidinawendimin (We Are All Related), Anishinaabe artist Jackie Traverse brings teachings of water into the architecture of the Kitchener

Indoor Recreation Complex through a large-scale mosaic. The work is grounded in the understanding of nibi (water) as a living spirit that sustains, connects, and carries all life. Nibi is not an amenity. It is a living presence, and a vital part of our shared relationship with the world around us.

Public Art Announced for Kitchener indoor recreation centre!

We're excited to share that renowned Indigenous artist Jackie Traverse has been commissioned to create a permanent 95-square-...

Unity Design Studio/Oct 9, 2025

Render of GIDINA WENDIMIN (We Are Related) tile mosaic at RBJ Schlegal Park

GIDINA WENDIMINI

(WE ARE ALL RELATED)

Within Anishinaabe teachings, women hold a central role as Water Keepers, entrusted with the responsibility of protecting water and carrying this knowledge across generations. Traverse's composition reflects that continuity. Layers of blue shift in response to light, while figures, currents, and forms move through one another in a measured and interconnected rhythm.

Situated within a public setting, the work offers a reflection on care, interdependence, and collective responsibility, positioning the recreation complex not only as a civic space, but as a site of connection between community and water.

Installation is scheduled for summer 2026

With Wintertime Stories, the City of Kitchener introduces the first Indigenous artwork to its permanent public collection, marking a meaningful step in its reconciliation efforts.

Created by Indigenous artists Isaac Murdoch (Serpent River First Nation) and Nyle Migizi Johnston (Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation), the 16-metre-long wall sculpture is installed at the Southwest Branch of the Kitchener Public Library. The work combines CNC-cut wood and laser-cut acrylic with Anishinaabe storytelling and woodland animal teachings.

Through symbolic figures representing love, celebration, courage, and respect, the artwork explores connection, stewardship, and environmental responsibility. Its composition creates a sense of movement, with forms emerging and receding to evoke memory, ecology, and shared knowledge.

The library becomes a space for living culture, where Indigenous worldviews are not an addition, but a foundation.

Selected through a competitive 2023 process prioritizing underrepresented voices, Wintertime Stories represents both an artistic achievement and a meaningful step in Kitchener's reconciliation journey.

Crafted from Baltic birch plywood and recycled acrylic, the work also reflects the library's net-zero commitment. Together, the materials, imagery, and storytelling create a dialogue between Indigenous artistic traditions and Kitchener's evolving cultural identity, while creating space for reflection on the stories that connect us all.

Wintertime Stories: As Told by the Artists

Watch on YouTube isaac murdoch.com @ISAACMURDOCHI miigizi.com @Miigizi NYLE JOHSTON

ISAAC MURDOCH

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The Spectra Creation Lab is the division of Highness Global that explores the intersection of human imagination and digital possibility.

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Fully curated, low-lift digital art programs.

Tailored to each building's location, community, demographics, infrastructure

Flexible delivery across digital screens, projections, and temporary activations Curated artworks for your existing digital displays

Installation and integration of new display systems

Optional add-ons: social media collateral, artist bios, and ready-to-publish content

ARTIST: ARNIE GUHA

The Spectra Creation Lab is the research and development arm of Highness Spectra, focused on how digital surfaces shape contemporary space.

Working across motion, XR, immersive media, and digital visualization, the Lab explores how art can be embedded within architecture, activated in public space, and extended into digital environments. It operates as an incubator for ideas, developed through research, prototyping, and simulation, with close attention to site, audience, and spatial rhythm.

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ARTIST: ABIOLA IDOWU

Some projects evolve into the rotating digital programs and site-specific installations that define Highness Spectra, while others remain conceptual studies that inform future directions. By prioritizing experimentation as a core methodology, the Spectra Creation Lab drives the ongoing development of dynamic, integrated visual environments.

• HIGHNESS GLOBAL ARTIST SERIES
• AAMBE GIIGIDODAA DEBWEWIM
• (LET US SPEAK THE TRUTH)

For Leigh Simpson-Ahwanaquot, language carries memory, knowledge, and ways of understanding the world."

Aambe Güigidodaa Debwewim (Let Us Speak the Truth) is a neon sculpture featuring a radiant mouth encircled by the Medicine Wheel. Acting as a contemporary beacon, it calls for courage, accountability, and the revitalization of Indigenous voices.

Indigenous languages carry teachings passed down through story and lived experience, shaping relationships to land, water, and all living beings. When a language disappears, so too does its knowledge, including lessons rooted in community, sustainability, and the natural world.

The work reflects both the impact of language loss and the responsibility of reclamation.

First shown at large scale at Pickering City Hall in Winter 2025/26, it now exists in smaller editions including patches, stickers, and tabletop sculptures, extending its message into everyday and wearable forms.

Across all forms, the intention remains consistent: to make language visible, present, and active in daily life.

Leigh Simpson-Ahwanaquot is a Serpent River First Nation artist, educator, and healing practitioner.

• www.facebook.com/warriorofwounds
• @warriorofwounds
• LEIGH SIMPSOM -
• AHWANAQUOT

Table top neon light art

Pre-order your light sculpture today.

The limited edition neon artwork, Aambe Güigidodaa Debwewim (Let Us Speak the Truth), stands as a glowing call to speak, heal, and reclaim language as medicine.

"When I hear people speaking Ojibway I tear up, as I can hear and feel my grandparents in the language. Within me lies a deep shame and fear about learning Ojibway, but I find the courage to push through, learning words and phrases whenever I can and proudly using them. My neon artwork is a beacon of hope, reminding me to be brave and one day speak my truths in the language." - Leigh Simpson-Ahwanaquot

Get in touch to bring the limited edition neon art home

Or show your support for Indigenous language preservation with a peripheral

• TOTE BAG
• PATCH
• VINYL STICKER

SUMMER 2026

SELKIRK MURALS

"Love is the strongest medicine" - Isaac Murdoch

ISAACMURDOCH.COM | @ISAAC_MURDOCH1

ISAAC MURDOCH

At the Selkirk Regional Health

Centre, two large-scale works by Isaac Murdoch form an installation grounded in care, relationality, and cultural continuity. Titled The Watering Hearts and The Good Life, the works were developed specifically for the healthcare environment with support from Highness Global. Each piece carries Murdoch's distinct visual language shaped by Anishinaabe knowledge systems, storytelling traditions, and lived practice.

Murdoch, whose Ojibwe name is Bomgiizhik, is widely recognized as both a storyteller and knowledge holder. His work draws from traditional teachings where image and story are inseparable, and where art functions as a living conduit for teaching, memory, and healing. Within this context, love is not treated as an abstract sentiment, but as an active force that sustains balance across people, land, and spirit. As medicine, love is understood as a relational practice expressed through care, reciprocity, and responsibility to one another. In Murdoch's work, this principle becomes visible. The works position healing as something collective and ongoing, extending beyond the clinical to include emotional, cultural, and spiritual dimensions.

Murdoch's installation reflects a growing recognition of the role art can play within institutional environments, particularly those centered on wellbeing. By embedding Indigenous knowledge and visual language into healthcare spaces, such works contribute to environments that are not only functional, but also culturally responsive and restorative. Large-scale commissions by Isaac Murdoch are available for select public, healthcare, and institutional projects.

THE GOO

WATERING HEARTS

HIGHNESS GLOBAL - ARTIST SERIES

JUMA STUDIO

"For every flower I've received - for loss, for celebration, for hope, for tragedy, for love. I take a bucket of water, wash them from my memories and pour them into these paintings." -Nigel Nolan

In collaboration with JUMA, artist Nigel Nolan extends his practice beyond canvas into a series of wearable and functional pieces that carry the same emotional register as his paintings.

Each work begins with memory. Florals gathered over time are translated into layered compositions, where colour and form hold moments of both intimacy and release. Through JUMA's process, these compositions move into material form, printed across garments and objects designed for everyday use.

Founded by Alia Juma, JUMA brings a focus on sustainability to the collaboration. Each piece is produced using recycled materials transforming plastic waste into textiles that carry both visual and environmental intention.

The result is a collection that sits between art and object. Personal, expressive, and quietly deliberate.

Available as a series of limited pieces, the collection invites a different kind of engagement with artwork....one that moves with the body and into daily life.

@nigel.nolan | https://nigelnolan.com NIGEL NOLAN

Add the Nigel Nolan Collection to your wardrobe today

• RELAXED FIT MAXI
• DRESS 15 RECYCLED
• WATER BOTTLES

JUMA

ALIA JUMA

HIGHNESS GLOBAL ARTIST SERIES

Founded in 2003, JUMA by Alia Juma has recently relaunched into a sustainable design platform offering clothing, accessories & soft furnishings from various brands, artists, musicians, digital designers, interior designers & like minded companies where everything is made from recycled water bottles.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Nigel Nolan printed Short Wrap Halter Dress 10 Recycled Water Bottles- Black

Nigel Nolan Printed Rectangle Pillow- 4 Recycled Water Bottles - White

Nigel Nolan Print 2 Wrap Skirt -

12 Recycled Water Bottles - Black

Nigel Nolan Printed Square Pillow 4 Recycled Water Bottles - Blue

Nigel Nolan Pocket Squares - 2 Recycled Water Bottles - Black

Nigel Nolan Shoulder Bag - 5 Recycled Water Bottles Cyan

Nigel Nolan Corset-4 Recycled Water Bottles - Blue

RECYCLED WATER BOTTLES

• NIGEL NOLAN HALTER
• DRESS 10 RECYCLED WATER
• BOTTLES WINE

HIGHNESS GLOBAL ARTIST SERIES

OBSERVING THE COSMOS

@shevjlewis www.shevonlewis.com SHEVON LEWIS

Recognized as a finalist for the Kingston Prize, the painting affirms Lewis's position within the evolving field of Canadian portraiture.

Toronto-based artist and educator Shevon Lewis works in oil painting, combining high realism with elements of surrealism to construct psychologically charged, contemplative images.

His practice is grounded in discipline, observation, and painterly structure, drawing from the classical studio tradition while extending it through a contemporary lens.

In Observing the Cosmos, Lewis presents a figure in quiet reflection, rendered through layered oil paint and subtle shifts in tone and atmosphere. The work balances stillness and tension, suggesting interior complexity beneath a restrained surface. It holds attention through nuance rather than spectacle.

We invite you to commision a custom portrait painted by Shevon

Special thanks to Amanda Clement, at Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board

Thank you to Amanda Clement and the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board for bringing vibrant, deeply meaningful Indigenous artworks into educational spaces across Hamilton, and for hosting interactive, collaborative storytelling sessions that inspired students and artists to co-create imaginative murals.

Smudging the Streets by Isaac Murdoch

Photos from Nyle in collaborative art and storytelling sessions with school children

• HIGHNESS GLOBAL ARTIST SERIES
• FIRESIDE STORYTELLING
• MIIGIZL.com @MIIGIZI

NYLE MIIGIZ JOHNSTON

Fireside Storytelling is an experiential public sculpture with an Extended Reality activation developed by artist Quinn Hopkins.

Created by Anishinaabe artist Nyle Miigizi Johnston, the work centres on his artwork of a grandfather sharing teachings within the Anishinaabe winter storytelling tradition.

The work references the fire as a site of knowledge transmission, foregrounding intergenerational exchange, continuity, and embodied storytelling. It situates viewers within a contemporary storytelling circle structured around attention and presence.

Illuminated flame-like acrylic forms and LED light construct a shifting visual field that evokes fire without literal representation. The work holds a presence across changing conditions, moving between sculpture and environment.

An Extended Reality layer expands the experience through sound and image, allowing the narrative to unfold across both physical and digital space. The technology remains secondary to the storytelling, serving as a subtle extension of the work rather than a distraction from it.

Originally commissioned for the Illuminite Festival by the Yonge Street BIA in Toronto, the work brings together sculpture, light, and immersive media in a unified installation.

The large-scale work is available for public art acquisition, with smaller mirrored editions available for private collections.

PIZZAIOLO

Internal Detail

Author & Chef: Ann Allchin | Photographer: Magdalena M.

Art Direction: Highness Global Inc. | Publisher: Highness Global Publishing House

The ultimate luxury coffee table cookbook that elevates the art of cannabis-infused cuisine, featuring a curated collection of elegant recipes, editorial photography, and captivating stories, this book redefines the edible experience. STONED is the ultimate cannabis-infused cookbook for foodies, art lovers, and cannabis enthusiasts.

Whether you're exploring cannabis cooking for the first time or you're a seasoned pro, STONED offers elegant, easy-to-follow recipes for infused appetizers, cocktails, and desserts. The book also dives into the untold stories of those who shaped cannabis culture, blending culinary innovation with cultural history. From decadent appetizers to inventive cocktails, every page is a feast for the senses, combining sophistication with a touch of rebellion.

HIGHNESS PUBLISHING HOUSE

Whether you're hosting a chic gathering or seeking inspiration in the kitchen, STONED is the definitive guide to a sophisticated high.

• STONED
• HIGHNESS
• HIGHNESS

Edibles Recipes for a Sophisticated Happy Hour for Highness Global Inc. (2023)

Photography by Magdalena M.

Art Direction by Highness Global Inc.

• STONE
• TONED
• STONED
• Japanese Style
• Cheesecake

STONED BOOK + STONED HOODIE + STONED BASEBALL CAP + BONUS KEEPSAKE BOX.

ORDER ONLINE

To learn more about our latest projects, visit us at Highnessglobal.com

Or get in touch at [email protected] in

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Aambe Giigidodaa Debwewim (Let Us Speak the Truth)

By Artist Leigh Simpson-Ahwanaquot

Personal neon sculptures for windows or desktops to help raise awareness for Indigenous language preservation.

JOIN THE MOVEMENT - PREORDERS OPEN NOW

HIGHNESS GLOBAL INC.

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