Masked Identity focuses on the life and art of Robert Burke, Denesuline (Chipewyan)/Black artist from Fort Smith, NWT. As a residential school survivor of 10 years, Robert knows the power of art. Robert’s art speaks to his life stories that emerge from the various social and political injustices he has experienced throughout his life on systematic, community, and individual levels that have informed Robert’s intricate symbolism. Creating his own elements and symbols, Robert steps out of a defined cultural iconography to construct his own unique style. This exhibition calls viewers in to witness Robert’s artistic and personal transformation as a Survivor who found healing and reconciliation through art.
Canadian artist collective Fire Season presents an exhibition of works from their biennial publication, an edited journal of written and visual sense-making on the topic of wildfires. The exhibition features poetry, visual art, photography, and video installation from contributors to the Fire Season book and archival wildfire materials from the BC Forest Discovery Centre to take a comprehensive and inclusive look at how wildfire continues to impact British Columbia in a kaleidoscope of cultural, political, industrial, and ecological ways.
Curated by Amory Abbott and Liz Toohey-Wiese.
Participating artists:
Amory Abbott Sara-Jeanne Bourget Ana Diab Kerri Flannigan Jonathan S. Green Jude Griebel Colton Hash Eli Hirtle Sylvia McKelvie Andreas Rutkauskas Kyle Scheurmann Liz Toohey-Wiese
Image: Sara-Jeanne Bourget, Charcoal Studies II, 2021.
The exhibition Latent emerges from conversations between artist Lynda Gammon and curator Carolyn Butler Palmer over the past several years about how artists who identify as women are often overlooked, ignored and sidestepped. At the Legacy Art Galleries, over the past decade the majority of solo exhibitions have featured the work of women artists and this exhibition furthers a desire to bring forward their work by honouring the many women who remain hidden in the University of Victoria’s Art Collection and the mechanisms that conceal them from view: the vault, accessioning, and the catalogue.
Under the Shade of the Lotus Tree: Pari Azarm Motamedi and Rozita Moini Shirazi is an exhibition that delves into the deep impact of leaving one’s homeland and the need for a connection to one’s roots. This show explores the power of Persian poetry as a foundation of cultural preservation and self-expression via the works of Persian-Canadian artists Pari Azarm Motamedi and Rozita Moini Shirazi. Motamedi and Moini Shirazi expertly translate and modernize classic Persian symbols, and stories, uncovering hidden messages in poems and tackling socio-political challenges in their nation. These artists inspire us to consider the complications of displacement and the everlasting value of art in bridging cultural barriers with powerful vision and elegant brushwork.
Untitled ṮEṮÁĆES is the result of an artistic collaboration between TEMOSEṈ Charles “Chazz” Elliott (Lekwungen/W̱SÁNEĆ), Jesse Campbell (Métis) and Dr. Kim Shortreed to prototype a motion-activated art installation that speaks aloud toponyms, or place names, in SENĆOŦEN and English.
This non-traditional map is an artograph of the islands that surround W̱SÁNEĆ territories, in the Salish Sea, including the place settlers call the Saanich Peninsula.
Haptic refers to the sensation of touch, position, and motion. Using a haptic map, viewers are invited to experience connections to place through representations of landscape and place names, and to provide a way to learn orally about SENĆOŦEN and settler namescapes through curiosity and play.
Walking Thru My Fires showcases the work of one of the most prolific living Indigenous artists on the West Coast. This deeply personal exhibition explores Indian Residential School legacies, urban Indigeneity, reconciliation, and the healing power of art through Francis Dick’s prints, paintings, carvings, and music. It is an autobiography written in art.
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.
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).
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.
In Spanish, derrumbar means to crumble away, to tumble down. Derrumbeat is a sonic collage accompanied by photos and video work created from the audio-visual traces left by falling rocks, pieces of wood, cement and ceramics collected in various abandoned sites in the capital of Cuba, Havana. Derrumbeat calls visitors to listen to the traces left by human passages and presence in an urban environment as time passes. It further encourages listeners to reflect on the rejuvenation of decay and the layers of meanings we can unearth in our own cities.
Related Programming
Sounds That Bring us Together: Panel discussion
Feb 24, 2022 UVic Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates St
Attending to the sounds around us can offer new perspectives on the spaces we inhabit. Sound is also a powerful tool to convey emotion and connect us with our past. Inspired by the current exhibition Derrumbeat – The Beat of Collapse, anthropologists, artists, musicians and composers will discuss how they think about and integrate sounds in their work with a focus on how sounds contribute to new forms of connection, collaboration, relation, and synthetization in the participants’ ways of thinking, reflecting and imagining.
Panelists:
Adi Laflamme, Composer, Producer, Performer, MA candidate School of Music, UVic Sue Frohlick, UBC Okanagan, Professor, Anthropology, Gender and Women’s Studies, UBC-Okanagan Paul Walde, Sound and Visual Artist, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, UVic
Moderator:
Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, Associate Professor, Anthropology, UVic
