Talk

Presented in partnership with Art Toronto, this panel discussion brings together an intergenerational group of Vancouver-based artists to discuss their histories with community and collaborative practices, the circumstances that brought them to the city, and their current projects in a time of distancing. Moderated by Althea Thauberger, this conversation includes Justine A. Chambers, Yasmine Haiboub, Sandra Semchuk, and Charlene Vickers.

Watch Online

Watch the panel discussion for free online here

Biographies

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. In her work she privileges what is felt over what is seen, by working with her body as an imperfect recording device to develop a cumulative embodied archive. Recent choreographic projects have been presented at Contemporary Art Gallery (2020), Sophiensaele (2019), Artspeak (2019), Hong Kong Arts Festival (2019), Art Museum at University of Toronto (2018), the Vancouver Art Gallery (2018), Agora de la Danse (2017), Festival of New Dance (2017), Canada Dance Festival (2016), Dancing on the Edge (2015), Dance in Vancouver (2013, 2015, 2019), and The Western Front (2013). Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

Yasmine Haiboub is an artist, facilitator and curator currently based in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is completing her BFA at Emily Carr University, where she received an Award for Community Engagement. She also co-founded Ground Floor Art Centre. Yasmine’s practice is interdisciplinary and focuses on community engagement and sculptural works. She engages with her immediate surroundings through performative gestures, interactive sculptures and mass accumulation of familiar objects, creating new narratives in public and private spaces. Yasmine is mainly concerned with creating intersectionality through self-awareness, care, hospitality, and self-proclaimed authority.

Sandra Semchuk is a photographer, writer and Governor General’s Award recipient in Visual and Media Arts. She is a storyteller who uses the familial, autobiography and dialogue as the basis for recognition and identity across generations, cultures and species. She collaborated with her late husband James Nicholas, Rock Cree writer and orator to disrupt myths that have shaped settler relations to First Nations. Her book, The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps (U of Alberta Press, 2018) considers legislated racism and the intergenerational consequences of Canada’s first internment camps when so many from the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman Empires were interned.

Althea Thauberger is an artist, filmmaker and educator known for place-based social documentary projects involving collaborative research and production. The final works — films, videos, audio recordings, and photographs — are reflections on local histories and sociopolitical power dynamics, including ones involved in the production process itself. Thauberger currently has a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, and has recently shown her work at the Art Gallery of Southern Alberta in Lethbridge, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Charlene Vickers is an Anishnabe artist based in Vancouver. Her painting, sculpture and performance works explore memory, healing and embodied connections to ancestral lands. Charlene is the recipient of the 2018 VIVA Award. Recent solo exhibitions include SFU Galleries (2018), aceartinc (2017) and Artspeak (2015), with a forthcoming solo project at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. Recent group exhibitions include Portland Art Museum (2019); Oakville Galleries (2018); Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2018); Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe (2017); Pataka Art Museum, New Zealand (2016); and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2016). She graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1994) and Simon Fraser University (BA, 1998; MFA, 2013).

Relevant links

Justine A. Chambers and Laurie Young, One Hundred More tanzforumberlin.de/en/production/one-hundred-more/

Ground Floor Art Centre, co-founded by Yasmine Haiboub groundfloorac.info/about

Portrait of Sandra Semchuk youtube.com/watch?v=OWK_4kNb-cE

Sandra Semchuk and James Nicholas, Taking off Skins themedicineproject.com/sandra-semchuk-james-nicholas.html

Charlene Vickers and Neil Eustache, Cool Indians on Main Street grunt.ca/cool-indians-on-main-street

Charlene Vickers and Marian Hupfield, Jingles and Sounds for Speaking to Our Grandmothers mariahupfield.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/massive-jingle-seattle-art-fair