A Trip Through Time | Tianna Delorme | a creative response to Neutral Ground’s library
Neutral Ground has been fortunate to work with Tianna Delorme for an internship as the Library and Gallery Coordinator in partnership with N’we Jinan. Tianna has accomplished so much in her time with us, from helping with installation, greeting visitors, drafting promotion, and the not so small feat of giving much needed tlc to Neutral Ground’s collection of publications, books, zines, etc. Over the past three months, Tianna has worked to organize and catalog our library, reorganizing shelves, sorting materials, and contributing to an ongoing database. As Tianna wraps up her internship she has written creative response to her work in the library – a thoughtful reflection on her engagement with printed ephemera and ongoing relationship to artist runs. Read Tianna’s response below!
Tianna Delorme is nêhiyaw from Cowessess First Nation, Treaty 4 territory. Tianna is a visual artist who works with painting and drawing. Her work reflects her personal lived experiences as an Indigenous woman. Her visual art practice documents her connections and feelings around her identity, spirituality, homeland and colonialism. Her drawings are focused on heavy themes of personal and seen experiences of ongoing consequences of colonialism. Tiannas paintings are a salve and focus on her connection to spirituality and document her cultural connections for herself and her community. She graduated in the Spring of 2025 from the University of Regina with a Bachelors of Fine Arts, and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. Tianna is a recipient of the Prince Edward Arts Scholarship.
A Trip Through Time
a creative response to Neutral Ground’s library
Tianna Delorme
Library and Gallery Coordinator
2026
During my time working at Neutral Ground I have been tasked with organizing and cataloging the library. I have been looking through books, magazines, zines, and catalogues from different time periods. The oldest publication material from 1951 to the latest material being from 2026. 75 years of publication of art, artists, artist run centres, galleries, and institutions. I pulled the books from the shelves and inspe
cted each of them, noticing some books had collected dust over time and some had fragile pages. I felt nervous to touch publications of the 1980s to the 1990s, conscious of their fragility not wanting to accidentally damage them. As I flipped through the pages I was immersed in artworks and spaces during the 1980s to 2000s. I became interested in the works of artists, artist run spaces, pop up galleries I had never encountered before. What also fascinated me was the typography and graphics of publications past, the use of wacky fonts, creative and flowing text, and the variety of colours on the walls. I continued to read through these publications of artists and artist run centres. It made me very excited to see the creativity and expression of not only the artwork, but also how these works were displayed, how the space changed, and how freeing and rule-bending it was to create exhibitions. I was also intrigued by the many experimental performances or also known as ‘happenings’, digital media and technology in frequent use, a noticeable trend during the 1980s to late 1990s.
Seeing the changes and progressions of artists and artist-run spaces was particularly interesting. These archival exposures offered inspiration as I looked through all the images and text. Offering different perspectives of how I can display my works in different ways or how I can write creatively for a gallery, maybe I will even take inspiration and borrow wacky or whimsical fonts that defined many of the publications from the 1980s or 1990s.
Through close encounters with the Neutral Ground library I feel grateful to those who have paved the way and did the ground work for the artists in the future. In seeing the patterns of progress I am reminded of the work of today, to take up the need to challenge perspectives and ways of knowing, to continue the important work of creating spaces for everyone, to be a part of the community and supporting one another.
