Local artist Simone Blais presents her debut documentary, Dance Like Everybody’s Watching. The short film exposes the lives of three Black dancers in Victoria, BC (lək̓ʷəŋən territory) as they expose their worlds of flamenco, hip hop, and dancehall. While the dancers grapple with racism, tokenism, and stereotypes, we are reminded that dance is always political. This film deals with themes of cultural appropriation in dance and is uniquely a BC production. 100% of the production, cast and crew are based in Victoria, BC.
Image: still from Dance Like Everybody’s Watching.
Gule Wamkulu invites the visitor to bear witness to the Great Dance that serves as the governance structure of the Chewa people. This immersive exhibition features photographs, films, and objects that celebrate how we, as diverse African Canadians, build community while being relationally respectful of all Coast Salish expressions of sovereignty.
—Guest curator, Dr. Devi Mucina, Program Director, School of Indigenous Governance & Kl. Peruzzo de Andrade
Piers is a group exhibition showing contemporary artwork ranging across media by 18 artists spanning generations, nationalities, and backgrounds, exploring how artists’ practices change through teaching, learning, and mentorship.
Artists: Katie Bethune-Leamen, Cedric Bomford, Lauren Brinson, Yan Wen Chang, Megan Dickie, Laura Dutton, Annika Eriksson, Daniel Laskarin, James Legaspi, Christopher Lindsay, Evan Locke, Danielle Proteau, Hollis Roberts, Arlene Stamp, Jennifer Stillwell, Beth Stuart, Grace Tsurumaru, Paul Walde.
Pop Anthropology is an exhibition of multimedia artist Eric Metcalfe’s oeuvre, spanning over sixty years, in celebration of the artist’s honorary doctorate from UVic (UVic DFA 2021, BFA 1970). This exhibition continues the playful and charged work of Metcalfe’s life: reimagining images, tropes and stereotypes as poignant and plentiful scraps from which to pull meaning. It honours his early development as a student in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria in the early 1970s, as well as his lifetime achievements as a pioneer in performance art in western Canada and co-founder of the Western Front, one of Canada’s leading and longest running artist run centres.
Image credit: Eric Metcalfe, Untitled, 1967, gouache and watercolour on paper.
Still Standing: Ancient Forest Futures brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to reflect on our relationship with old-growth forests in B.C. from a range of cultural and philosophical perspectives. The exhibition explores the relationships between art, ecology and activism in order to envision futures which honour reciprocal relationships with nature.
Artists: Carey Newman, Connie Morey, Gord Hill, Heather Kai Smith, Jeremy Herndl, Jordan Hill, Kelly Richardson, Kyle Scheurmann, Mike Andrew McLean, Paul Walde, Rande Cook, Valerie Salez. Image: Jeremy Herndl, The Black Cedar, 2021.
Out of Place delves into the relationships between the ground beneath our feet and the roofs over our heads. Through sculpture, photography and stop-motion projection, artist Connie Michele Morey explores ecological displacement (a colonial separation from the earth as home) and its impact on labour and housing dislocation. The exhibition grows out of tensions embodied in the artist’s mixed settler and Indigenous identity, alongside her personal experiences with housing insecurity. Emerging from travel to over fifty former village and industry sites on the east and west coasts of Canada, Out of Place questions what it means to be at home with the body, community, and earth. Image: Connie Morey, Roof Over My Head, Slag Heap, Coal Mine #1, K’omoks Traditional Territory (Comox Valley, BC), 2019.
The Sidewalk Gallery is located outside Legacy Downtown in our Broad Street windows.
Art of Reconciliation invites viewers to witness and participate in a dialogue with youth about what reconciliation means for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working together to form friendships and take action. The artwork in this show is the result of weeks of reflection, group discussion and deep learning about reconciliation, Indigenous culture, and colonization.
Isshoni: Henry Shimizu’s Paintings of New Denver Internment is an exploration of Japanese Canadian identity, community, and family. Centering the voices of three generations, issei, nisei, and sansei (first, second, and third-generation), this exhibition provides insight into the intergenerational impacts of the forced uprooting and internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII.
Japanese Canadians in the arts: “Did you think it’d come true?”
A Lansdowne Lecture with artist Bryce Kanbara
April 23, 2022 | 7pm UVic Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Exploring Japanese Canadian artists, issues of identity, and intergenerational relationships, Governor General Award-winning artist Bryce Kanbara will give a presentation for the opening of the exhibition Isshoni: Henry Shimizu’s Paintings of New Denver Internment. With opening remarks by the exhibition curator, Samantha Marsh.
Artist-teachers practice in a hybrid space where pedagogy, art-making, and research intertwine and inform each other. UVic Art Education faculty and sessional instructors share their diverse perspectives, approaches, and experiences inviting visitors to consider ways in which art education stimulates engagement with critical questions and creates stronger connections between people, places, and ideas.
Artists:
Robert Dalton, Mike Emme, Karen Hibbard, Natalie LeBlanc, Connie Michele Morey, Regan Rasmussen, Natasha S. Reid, Kathleen Schmalz, Alison Shields, Shruti Tandon, Michelle Wiebe, William Zuk, Caren Willms
Image: Mike Emme, Lockers, 1986/2022.
Related Programming
‘that to which we cling’ Drop-in clay hand-building workshop with Regan Rasmussen
Saturday, May 14 2022 | 11-3pm UVic Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Facilitated by Regan Rasmussen (UVic Art Education), this workshop is dedicated to the theme of resilience. Using local mollusk shells as inspiration and applying clay hand-building techniques, participants will respond to a ceramic sculpture installation from the exhibition Breaking the Mold by making their own small ceramic artifact while considering the question: What beliefs and practices do we cling to for sanctuary and resilience in times of adversity?
Free and open for all ages Drop-in, no registration required
Saturday, June 18 2022 | 12-3pm UVic Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Come join us for a pop-up art hive in the gallery! Visitors are invited to experiment with art making in a welcoming drop-in community setting. To learn more about art hives, visit www.arthives.org. As a starting point, Natasha S. Reid will facilitate an activity that explores various fruits and vegetables commonly grown in Jamaica.
At the end, you can give your finished art work to ISSAMBA’s La Teranga Food Distribution to be added to a food hamper or you can bring it home and gift it to someone you know.
This art activity is an extension of Natasha’s artwork Plantain Belt currently exhibited in the Breaking the Mold exhibition at UVic’s Legacy Gallery (630 Yates Street).
Tuesday – Saturday, 4:30pm – 10:00pm Located outside on Broad Street side of Legacy Downtown
Image: Stillfrom This Ink Runs Deep (2019).
Documentary short by filmmaker Asia Youngman
All across Canada, Indigenous artists are reawakening both traditional and contemporary tattoo practices as a way to reclaim their cultures and identities. Asia Youngman’s documentary short This Ink Runs Deep explores the revival of cultural tattooing.
While attending a film festival in 2018, I had the honour of receiving a tā moko in New Zealand from artist Tipi Wehipeihana, which is the traditional style of tattooing for the Māori people. When I had the opportunity later that same year to direct a documentary on traditional Indigenous tattoo practices in Canada, I realized that I had minimal knowledge about this art form that our people were doing right here on Turtle Island. Throughout the production process, I was privileged to meet some of the artists who were passionately working to revive these practices that had been taken away due to colonization. – Asia Youngman
This Ink Runs Deep is about more than just tattooing. It’s a celebration of the growing pride that is happening across Turtle Island as we revive different aspects of our culture and reconnect to our ancestral teachings. While growing up, I struggled with acknowledging my own identity as a Cree-Métis woman. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties when I started to learn more about my culture and became more grounded in my identity. I understood what it was like to have a fractured identity and feel that disconnect, especially as a youth. With that in mind, it was essential that this film also emphasized the importance of sharing these teachings with the next generation.
I’m deeply grateful to Nakkita Trimble, Dion Kaszas, Jana Angulalik, Audie Murray, Kwiaahwah Jones, and Gregory Williams for sharing your time, your teachings and your stories. Each of these artists brought something unique to this documentary, whether it was their particular style of tattooing or their personal journeys. When I reflect on the process of making this film, I am warmly reminded of how our team was welcomed into the lives and homes of these incredible artists who continue to inspire me every day. kinanâskomitin.
This Ink Runs Deep was on view in Legacy’s sidewalk gallery space along Broad Street and can also be viewed on the CBC network’s YouTube channel.
Related Programming
Asia Youngman Screening with Q&A
Feb 12, 2022 | 6 – 7:30PM UVic Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Join us for an evening with Cree-Métis filmmaker, Asia Youngman. We will host a screening of Asia Youngman’s film This Ink Runs Deep, a documentary short about the revival of cultural tattooing, and nx̌aʔx̌ʔitkʷ (na-haha-eet-ku), a narrative short about a teenager who must navigate peer pressure when her next door neighbour convinces her to explore a nearby island in search of a legendary lake monster.
Curated by Mel Granley (Metis), Young Canada Works Intern with lessLIE (Coast Salish artist)
2020 marked the ten-year anniversary the First Peoples House. This exhibition focused on Coast Salish title and relationship to land and how this is communicated through art.
In doing a write up for this exhibition I felt a certain level of trepidation that my voice as a Métis and settler person would be inadequate, inappropriate, or too loud, and so I am extremely thankful and humbled to have the words of artist lessLIE to take precedence over mine. If you are non-Indigenous or not Coast Salish my hope is that this exhibition will encourage you to consider your position on these lands, what brought you here, and your responsibilities to the Coast Salish peoples who have tended to this land for time immemorial. Hiy-hiy! – Melissa Granley
This continuum of Coast Salish art and artists is a visual means for acknowledging Salish territory… Such a geographical acknowledgement of traditional territories is vital in the 21st century. Most North Americans know the anxiety of protecting land from terrorism and nuclear bombs. In an era of Wet’suwet’en Solidarity and of COVID-19, the acknowledgement of land is vital to the future of humanity. – lessLIE
Featured artists include Margaret August, Butch Dick, TEMOSEN Charles Elliott, Jordanna George, Stan Greene, Edward Joe, Maynard Johnny Jr., Sarah Jim, lessLIE, Sage Paul, Andy Peterson, Susan Point, Manuel Salazar, Dylan Thomas.
This program is generously funded in part by the Salish Weave Collection.
Curated by Dion Kaszas Organized by the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
Body Language is about the reclamation of cultural tattooing in the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition takes an intimate look at historic and contemporary cultural tattooing from the perspectives of 5 Indigenous artists. Body Language explores designs on skin and their relationship to traditional clothing, rock art, jewelry, basketry and weaving to provide healing, protection and a sense of cultural knowledge and belonging
Image credit: Aaron Leon, The Body Language artists during planning meetings at Whistler, 2017.
Related Programming
Live Tattoo Demo and Artist Talk
with Audie Murray and Nicole Neidhardt
March 12 2022 | 12-4pm UVic Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Join artists Nicole Neidhardt (Diné) and Audie Murray (Michif) for a live demonstration of cultural tattooing in person and online. Nicole will be demonstrating hand-poke tattooing in person at the Legacy Art Gallery Downtown while Audie demonstrates skin-stitch tattooing remotely. Opening prayer and artist talks begin at noon, with tattoo demonstrations to follow.
Artist Talk
Jan 13, 2022 | 7-8:30pm
Online via Zoom
Join us for a panel discussion among the artists Nahaan (Tlingit), Nakkita Trimble (Nisga’a) and Dion Kaszas (Nlaka’pamux) featured in Body Language: Reawakening Cultural Tattooing of the Northwest exhibition now on display at the Legacy Art Gallery.
Learn about cultural tattooing from an Indigenous perspective. Artists will cultural tattooing is connected to their respective cultures, personal identities’ and how they are reviving this practice in their communities.
