Photographer and video artist Shelley Niro grew up in the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in Ontario. Her conceptual work often combines images from popular culture, portraits of living Indigenous women, and Mohawk imagery. Niro uses humor and photo montages to reflect on the intersection of gender and indigeneity, paralleling the efforts of photographer Cindy Sherman and other artists of the Pictures Generation. In 2012, Niro received the Ontario Arts Council's Aboriginal Arts Award (now known as the Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Arts Award) and the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2017. Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, a comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s career, opened at the National Museum of the American Indian in 2023.