Schedule of Events – 2021
Artist talks are scheduled every Wednesday afternoon, Keynote presentations and Panel Discussions are scheduled throughout the week.
Registration is required to attend the artists talks, and the keynote presentations can be viewed via live stream on the FCCS YouTube channel.
Wednesday, May 12: Christine Howard Sandoval Artist Talk
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
CHRISTINE HOWARD SANDOVAL is an interdisciplinary artist of Obispeño Chumash and Hispanic ancestry. Her work challenges the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation through the use of performance, video, and sculpture. Howard Sandoval makes work about contested places, such as the historic Native and Hispanic waterways of northern New Mexico; the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in New York; and an interfacing suburban-wildland in Colorado.
Thursday, May 13: Indigenous Land as Art
When: 2:00 – 4:00pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Panel discussion lead by Tania Willard with participating artists Roxanne Charles and Christine Howard Sandoval.
Indigenous artists involved in land-based art practices are deeply engaged with local contexts, histories and futurities of Indigenous lands. In contrast to the lack of awareness of Indigenous land, culture or existence present in Land Art traditions these artists discuss community engagements, practices and current realities of their works which intersect with ways of making that are land-centred or land-based. These practices also engage intersecting identities, communities and pressures on the land like extraction, development and Settler dispossessed territories. This panel will address these topics and more in a conversation between artists Christine Howard Sandoval, Roxanne Charles and Indigenous Art Intensive coordinator Tania Willard.
Wednesday, May 19: Maureen Gruben Artist Talk
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Inuvialuk artist Maureen Gruben employs intimate materiality as she disassembles and re-combines disparate organic and industrial elements. Polar bear fur, beluga intestines, and seal skins encounter resins, vinyl, and bubble wrap, forging critical links between life in the Western Arctic and global environmental and cultural concerns. Gruben holds a BFA from the University of Victoria. She has exhibited regularly across Canada and internationally and her work is held in national and private collections. Born and raised in Tuktoyaktuk, she has a tacit knowledge of Arctic land and the rich but increasingly precarious resources it offers for both survival and creation.
Monday, May 24: Keynote Speaker: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Online via Live Stream
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Wednesday, May 26: Madeline Terbasket Artist Talk
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Madeline Terbasket (they/them) is a two-spirit Syilx, Ho-Chunk, Anishinaabe performing artist that explores themes of cultural identity and mental health in their work. Madeline began making films as a teenager in their home territory of the Similkameen Valley in the South Okanagan. They attended six summer sessions at the Gulf Island Film and Television School. Madeline was in the Acting for Stage and Screen program at Capilano University. They discovered a passion for clowning and stand-up. They express their comedy by telling traditional Okanagan coyote stories.
Wednesday, May 26: Suzanne Kite Artist Talk
When: 2:30 – 4:00pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Kite is an Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist, and composer, a PhD candidate at Concordia University, Research Assistant for the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, a 2019 Trudeau Scholar, a 2020 Tulsa Artist Fellow, and a 2020 Women at Sundance x Adobe Fellow. Her research is concerned with contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance practice.
Thursday, May 27: Soundings
When: 11:00 – 1:00pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Panel discussion lead by Dylan Robinson with participating artists Tanya Lukin Linklater and Raven Chacon.
Monday, May 31: Panel Discussion
When: 2:30 – 4:30pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Panel discussion lead by Toby Lawrence with participating artists Léuli Eshraghi, Heather Iqloliorte, and Cathy Mattes.
Wednesday, June 2: Krista Belle Stewart Artist Talk
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Pre-recorded talk, available via download.
Krista Belle Stewart is an artist and member of the Syilx Nation currently based in Berlin, Germany. Stewart works with video, land, performance, photography, textiles and sound, drawing out personal and political narratives inherent in archival materials while questioning their articulation in institutional histories.
Thursday, June 3: Keynote Speaker: Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Online via Live Stream
Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (born in 1977 in Yaoundé, Cameroon) is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and is the artistic director of Sonsbeek20–24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He is the artistic director of the 13th Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography in Mali in 2021.
Monday, June 7: Panel Discussion
When: 2:00 – 3:30pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Panel discussion lead by Julie Nagam with participating artists Scott Benesiinaabandan and Maureen Gruben.
Wednesday, June 9: Camille Georgeson-Usher Artist Talk
When: 1:00 – 2:00pm
Where: Pre-recoded, will be available via download.
Camille Georgeson-Usher is a Coast Salish / Sahtu Dene / Scottish scholar, artist, and writer from Galiano Island, British Columbia which is the land of the Penelakut Nation. Usher completed her MA in Art History at Concordia University and is currently a PhD candidate at Queen’s University. In addition to her academic work, she is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective and has worked as an arts programmer in a variety of arts institutions in both Quebec and Ontario.
Wednesday, June 9: Scott Benesiinaabanda Artist Talk
When: 2:00 – 3:00pm
Where: Pre-recoded, will be available via download.
Scott Benesiinaabanda is an Anishinaabe (Obishikokaang First Nations) intermedia artist that currently works in experimental image-making and sonic materials. Scott’s current research interests are intersections of artificial intelligence and Anishinaabemowin. Scott has completed international residencies at Parramatta Artist Studios in Australia, Context Gallery in Derry, North of Ireland, and University Lethbridge/Royal Institute of Technology iAIR. Scott has completed residencies with Initiative for Indigenous Futures and AbTec in Montreal. Benesiinaabandan has completed an MFA in photography at Concordia University and is currently working out of his hometown of Winnipeg where he is an artist-in-residence at Abijijiwan New Media Lab (2021).
Thursday, June 10: Keynote Speaker: Dr. Jolene Rickard
When: 1:00 – 2:30pm
Where: Online via Live Stream
Dr. Jolene Rickard is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and contemporary art, materiality, and ecocriticism with an emphasis on Hodinöhsö:ni aesthetics.
Monday, June 14: Panel Discussion
When: 2:00 – 3:30pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Panel discussion lead by Cathy Mattes with participating artists Peter Morin and Camille Usher.
Wednesday, June 16: Peter Morin Artist Talk
When: 1:00 – 2:00pm
Where: Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE
Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan ancestor artists. He has now lived away from his home territory for most of his life, but like his ancestors who have walked on the land, he carries Tahltan knowledge, ideas and history with him wherever he is. Every step along the way, Tahltan knowledge has guided his researching, dreaming, learning, making of the past twenty years of artistic and curatorial practice. Morin began art school in 1997, completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2001 and his Masters in Fine Arts in 2010 at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan. Initially trained in lithography, Morin’s artistic practice moves from printmaking to poetry to drum-making to button blanket making to installation to beadwork to performance art.