WEDGE RESIDENCY
CAG and Ground Floor are delighted to announce the recipients of this year's WEDGE residencies. These residencies will provide early-emerging artists and cultural practitioners with the opportunity to work directly with a mentor to explore a research question related to the past, present and or future of “Vancouver” culminating in a public-facing audio output in 2023.
Phoebe Bei
Mentored by Urban Subjects (Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen and Helmut Weber)
Phoebe Bei is an interdisciplinary artist working largely in image-based processes and installation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land, and how land is occupied and disseminated in the production of home, culture and identity. Bei was British Columbia’s recipient of the BMO 1st Art! Prize in 2018 and holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University. She has exhibited at the Audain Gallery, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, James Black Gallery, and Or Gallery.
Rain Cabana-Boucher
Mentored by Laiwan
Rain Cabana-Boucher is a Michif/British settler interdisciplinary artist raised in Treaty 6 territory, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her family has historic ties to the Michif communities of St. François Xavier and St. Boniface, Manitoba, and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She currently lives and works on the stolen land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ and xwməθkwəy̓əm Nations. Cabana-Boucher explores the autobiographical in relation to place and politics, seeking to navigate the complexities of identity within environments that are rapidly changing under systematic pressures. She is a recent recipient of the Takao Tanabe Prize for emerging British Columbia Painters and the First Peoples’ Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant.
Chipo Chipaziwa
Mentored by Krystal Paraboo
Chipo Chipaziwa is a visual artist who predominantly works in the medium of performance art.
Chipaziwa’s practice concerns itself with the fluidity of identity, the performativity of the Black body and Chipaziwa’s own investigation of disrupting the gaze of the other.
Chipaziwa has previously worked with the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver, the City of Vancouver and Live Biennale.
Chipaziwa currently resides on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
Ruby Smith Díaz
Mentored by Wayde Compton
Ruby Smith Díaz is an Afrolatina educator, multi-disciplinary artist and body positive personal trainer. She was born in amiskwaciy, and graduated from the University of Alberta with a degree in Education with distinction. Her work as a filmmaker has been featured at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax and at the Vancouver Film Festival. Her writing has appeared in Nora Samaran’s book Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture and Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism. Currently, Ruby spends most of her time facilitating her arts-based Black Histories + Futures workshops in high schools and coaching people of all backgrounds to be their strongest selves.
Luca Cara Seccafien
Mentored by Afuwa
Luca Cara Seccafien is a comic artist, printmaker, facilitator, and cultural worker on the stolen ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ people. Their semi-autobiographical artwork reflects upon the experience of being disabled by trauma while surviving through relational queerness.
Luca has worked alongside veteran artists and activists at 221A, Gallery Gachet, Powell Street Festival, Queer Arts Festival, Heart of the City Festival, and beyond. They’ve spent twelve years working in fundraising, administration, operational, managerial, and production capacities in the arts. Luca co-founded WePress Community Arts Space, where they facilitated printmaking education for communities coping with systemic oppression.