Art as a Tool for Change Symposium | Schedule of Events
Art as a Tool for Change recognizes art as an empowering tool to facilitate critical dialogue around feminism, anti-racism, 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, environmental activism and so much more. Join Eastern Edge for a symposium weekend full of discussions, workshops, and presentations that will highlight diverse artists from across Canada, whose work is empowering, inspiring, and challenges social paradigms! Throughout the symposium we will explore the question: As artists, how can we create art that has the power to affect change? Participation in this symposium will be free, with public events taking place online and in-person.
Thursday, March 3rd
How do we as artists create work that inspires others to engage in critical dialogue with social, political, and environmental issues?
ARTIST WORKSHOP: NASIM MAKAREMI NIA
11-12PM
Nasim Makaremi Nia will facilitate an embroidery workshop where participants will learn about traditional Persian carpet-making and patterns while discussing the censorship of menstruation and womanhood in different cultures. Inspired by the artist’s work, participants will hone their sewing skills by creating their own embroidered patterns on sanitary pads before collaboratively installing them in the gallery as part of the piece “Memory of Dome”. Supplies and Materials will be provided.
PANEL: MAKING WITH LARRY WEYAND
1-2:30 PM
Description: Materiality influences making. Materiality is a tangible way to relate. Materiality plays a crucial role in informing how we connect to the world around us. This panel will discuss how research methodologies in contemporary craft-based practices uncover deeply-rooted narratives through making. Artists Nicole Travers, Nico Williams and Bruno Vinhas will join Larry Weyand for a conversation about process and material practices as tools to connect to land, place, and community.
BODY HOUSE, WITH BRUNO VINHAS & VALENTINA GAIA LOPS
6-8 PM
Body House is a collaboration between St. John’s-based textile design – theatre artist Bruno Vinhas and Italian visual and dance artist Valentina Gaia-Lops to create a multidisciplinary installation that draws from dance, text, photography, video and textile art in its storytelling. Weaving together a series of autobiographical accounts of people’s relationships with their own bodies, Body House takes its inspiration from one of Valentina’s photography projects, Amor Proprio, and asks the question: Is it selfish to love oneself?
Food will be available 30 mins prior to the event – come by early for a bite! If you have any dietary restrictions, please email rachel@easternedge.ca
Friday, March 4th
How are contemporary artists engaging with archives/histories and using art as a tool to reshape these narratives?
ARTIST WORKSHOP: VIOLET DRAKE
12-1:30 PM
Developing Queer Poetics at the Atlantic Edge.
This workshop will explore how to develop your own poetic voice as 2SLGBTQ+ islanders here in Ktaqmkuk (colonially known as Newfoundland & Labrador).
How do 2SLGBTQ+ folks do poetry here at the Atlantic Edge? What impact do place and environment have upon the poetic process for creators on the rock? What do you have to say as a poet here on the island, and why?
During this community dialogue guided by Violet Drake, we will creatively and critically explore identity construction through storytelling, vocal development through writing and performance, and how issues of representation and exclusion complicate the lives and practices of gender and sexually diverse creators playing with poetry residing in Ktaqmkuk.
PANEL: ARCHIVES & HISTORIES WITH DAZE JEFFERIES
2:30 PM
Online Event: Click here to register
Panellists, Faune Ybarra, Beck Gilmer-Osborne, Excel Garay, and key note speaker, Bushra Junaid, will explore how contemporary artists work with and against the silence, stories, and gaps that structure colonial archives. Rendering counter-historical timelines of closeness, touch, and reparation, creative practices offer ways to confront and challenge the precarious past.
HOW TO BUILD A RUIN, PERFORMANCE BY HAZEL MEYER & CAIT MCKINNEY
8 PM
Online Event: Click here to register
This performance takes up thinking and feeling about ruins in relation to sexuality. When is a ruin ruined and for whom? How can we think about ruins alongside other erotic modalities, like “to be ruined.” To poke at these questions, the performance follows a winding path: from the Spomeniks of the former Yugoslavia, to the moss, rot, and fecundity of Vancouver, a city that is always wet, to speculation about what Minnie Mouse has been doing in Toon Town since Disneyland’s COVID closure. Featuring guest appearances by Meyer’s mother, Cvjetka, and Minnie Mouse.
Saturday, March 5th
How do artists use art to explore their relationships to place, the land, the body as land, environmentalism, land back movements, etc.
ARTIST WORKSHOP: ETHEL BROWN
12-1 PM
In-person, 72 Harbour Drive: This event is FULL for in-person attendance
e-mail us at easternedgegallery@gmail to be put on the waitlist.
How do we view ourselves in relation to our environment? What does it mean to belong, and who gets to decide? In this workshop, led by Ethel Brown, participants will explore how text can be used alongside images to create a visual dialogue in the form of diptychs. Supplies will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring pictures that are meaningful to them.
POETRY READING WITH DOUGLAS WALBOURNE-GOUGH, MICHELLE SYLLIBOY, & SHALAN JOUDRY
2 PM
Online Event: Click here to register
This poetry reading will highlight the work of three Atlantic Canadian Indigenous poets whose work explores their relationship to place and the land.
ARTIST PRESENTATION : MEAGAN MUSSEAU, MARCH 5, 1819 – MARCH 5, 2022
4:30-5:30 PM
In-person, 72 Harbour Drive: This event is FULL for in-person attendance
e-mail us at easternedgegallery@gmail to be put on the waitlist.
Meagan Musseau [Mazoo] will offer an action referencing Shanawdithit’s drawing, “the taking of Mary March [Demasduit] on the north side of the lake”. 203 years later, Mazoo will collaborate with Shanawdithit’s marks as a way to continue re-telling the narrative from an Indigenous woman’s perspective. This action also stands on the shoulders of contemporary dialogue brought forward in Rebecca Belmore’s video artwork, “March 5, 1819”. The public is welcome to witness, there will be a short discussion to follow.
SPRUCE ROOT BASKET WITH EVAN BUTLER
7-9 PM
In-person, 72 Harbour Drive: Click here to register
Through the Canadian Council of Arts funding the Bay St. George Mi’kmaq Cultural Revival Committee hosted a 2-day Spruce Root Basket workshop with basket-maker Dan White. This project was completed in 2019 and was filmed by Evan Butler. Join us for a film screening and discussion with Evan of Spruce Root Baskets.
Food will be available 30 mins prior to the event – come by early for a bite! If you have any dietary restrictions, please email rachel@easternedge.ca
Please note:
*When you register for workshops or in-person events, you commit to taking one of the limited participant spaces. Please inform us ASAP if you need to cancel so that we can provide someone else with the opportunity.
*Masks and valid vaccination pass are required for in-person events.
*All times are in NST
*All events and workshops are free
Thank you to the Canada Arts Presentation Fund (CAPF) for their support.
Art as a Tool for Change is supported in part by the Canadian Artist Presentation Fund.
Ce projet est financé par le gouvernement du Canada
