Years after her death, a trailblazing transgender P.E.I. artist will be part of prestigious Venice show

Erica Rutherford — a groundbreaking transgender painter, filmmaker and writer — is the first Prince Edward Island artist to ever be selected for the prestigious Venice Biennale art show. 

Rutherford died in 2008. Now five of her paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s will be part of the main Biennale exhibit, titled Foreigners Everywhere, which opens April 20. She is the only Canadian artist in this year’s exhibit. 

“This is an artist that I’m really, really glad to see getting recognized,” said Pan Wendt, curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, who has spent years studying and cataloguing Rutherford’s work. 

“To have someone like