Welcoming Artist in Residence, Rae Swan!
We are thrilled to have a new Artist in Residence joining us from April 10 – May 23, please give a warm welcome to Rae Swan!
Rae arrived on April 10th to join us for the opening reception of our new exhibitions, and has since been getting acquainted with St. John’s. Eager to connect with the land and local community, Rae will be exploring the city in these beginning stages of their residency.
“Inspired by Susan Sontag’s On Photography, I am interested in challenging the practice of traditional landscape photography, where it exists separate from us, haunting and still. Indigi-futurism looks to honour ancestral knowledge to guide our way forward. As we see everything through our screens, we see the natural world in a colonial way: stagnant, far-removed from our daily lives, and commodified.
To reconnect to the Land we have to trust in its autonomy and approach a relationship with curious wisdom. I want to know How does the world change when we change the way we look at it? I’ll begin this project without a camera, exploring Newfoundland and local communities. Then, once familiar, research will converge with performance and videography. I will strap the camera to my body; it becomes an organ and I, a cyborg; making footage on how a human creature moves in relation to the land. Contrasting the picture perfect images we are used to, the videos place the conversation in-between and in the now.”
Image credit: Daisy Wu
Rae Swan is an interdisciplinary artist who makes performance and lens-based art. Her practice connects the digital world to the natural world, using the camera as a looking glass portal/extension of the body to witness alternate perspectives to reality. Through a feminist approach she is discovering what it means to be a queer Indigenous-settler while researching mystical history and reconnecting to the land. In 2023, Rae graduated with First class honours from the University of Manitoba, and has been the recipient of awards including the Shanski Fine Arts Award and the Manitoba Craft Retreat Award. She currently lives and makes art in Winnipeg.