Symposium: SOUTHERN SCENE - Inuit Disenchantment

Image of a snowmobile
Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - 1:30pm to 3:30pm

Indigenous Visual Culture’s annual Fall symposium will draw attention to Inuit artists who live and practice in the "south” as they are forgotten or deleted from the conversation and discourse around Inuit Art and ‘northern’ expectations. Dr. Heather Igloliorte will discuss and introduce the issue and lead a conversation between the panelists including Barry Pottle, Beth Kotierk, Geronimo Inutiq and Britt Gallpen.

Keynote and Moderator:

Heather Igloliorte is a Concordia University Research Chair in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement and an Assistant Professor of Indigenous art history from Nunatsiavut, Labrador, who resides in Montreal. Heather's teaching and research interests center on Inuit and other Native North American visual and material culture, circumpolar art studies, performance and new media art, the global exhibition of Indigenous arts and culture, and issues of colonization, sovereignty, resistance, resilience and resurgence. 

Panelists:

Beth Kotierk was born in Iqaluit, Nunavut and grew up in Ottawa. She studied Sculpture and Installation and Indigenous Visual Culture at OCAD University. In 2009, she was awarded the inaugural Norval Morriseau Fine Arts Bursary. Today her work is multi-disciplinary ranging from performance, video, painting to design.

Barry Pottle is an emerging Inuk artist from Nunatsiavut in Labrador (Rigolet), now living in Ottawa. He has worked in and with the Ontario Aboriginal arts community for many years. He believes that the concept of Urban Inuit is relatively new and for the most part unexplored (compared to other Urban Aboriginal groups in Canada). As an emerging artist, he is trying give voice and reality to this concept. 

Geronimo Inutiq considers himself amongst other things a self-taught and independent electronic & electro-acoustic musician, and multi-media artist. Having been exposed to strong traditional Inuit cultural elements in his youth, as well as the exciting worlds of modern art, and broadcast & media. Through close members of his kin, he has been able to weave those reference points into his practice.

Britt Gallpen is a critic and emerging curator based in Toronto, Canada. She is currently completing an M.A. in Art History at York University, specializing in contemporary Canadian art and curatorial studies. Her current project includes the Arctic Noise Project. http://www.arcticnoiseproject.com/

Image: Idle No More by Barry Pottle
 

Venue & Address: 
Open Space Gallery Meeting Room 51 McCaul St 
Website: 
http://www.facebook.com/events/1471874093109467
Email: 
<p>rrice@faculty.ocadu.ca</p>

Bonnie Devine’s Battle for the Woodlands on view at the AGO

Bonnie Devine with her installation. Image courtesy AGO.
Bonnie Devine's Battle for the Woodlands in the gallery. Image courtesy AGO.

Bonnie Devine, an associate professor and the founding chair of OCAD U’s Indigenous Visual Culture program, spent part of her summer installing a new work, Battle for the Woodlands, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The installation expands an early 19th century map of Upper and Lower Canada to reflect an Anishinaabe world view. 

Battle for the Woodlands will be on view at the AGO for a year, and is an extension of the AGO’s major temporary summer exhibition, Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes, which features work by leading modern and contemporary artists, including Norval Morrisseau, Michael Belmore, Daphne Odjig, OCAD U instructor Robert Houle, and others. Before and After the Horizon opened on July 30 and runs until November 25.

Before and After the Horizon is co-organized by the AGO and the National Museum of the American Indian. It’s a celebration of visual expressions of the spiritual and social dimensions of our relations with the earth, and at the same time challenges certain accepted accounts of history. 

Devine, whose work “Letter to William,” is part of the temporary exhibition, was talking with Andrew Hunter, the AGO’s curator for Canadian Art, about a historic map of upper and lower Canada and what it meant one day earlier this year when she came up with the idea to overlay an Anishinaabe vision over the map to show the four great lakes represented as spirit animals, as well as the important sites of conflict and contact between European and Anishinaabe people. 

Hunter saw the idea as an opportunity to both respond to and extend the ideas of the temporary exhibition through the rest of the gallery and spark conversations. As part of the installation process, Devine worked in the gallery during viewing hours so she could engage with viewers and answer questions. 

“Devine’s installation has accomplished a great deal, and at the same time resulted in endless intense and meaningful conversations with the public, guests and officials in the gallery,” said Hunter. “The goal for us with projects like this to create a deep engagement, not only between the AGO and OCAD U, but also with this place and the land — the deep human history and our part of our community. It challenges the institution to learn, change and grow.”

 

Learn more

Before and After the Horizon 

Bonnie Devine image timeline 

Bonnie Devine faculty biography 

 

OCAD University offers new undergraduate major in Aboriginal Visual Culture

Thursday, October 11, 2012 - 4:00am

First of its kind in Canada, the Aboriginal Visual Culture Interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts will begin enrolment in September 2013

(Toronto—October 11, 2012) Students considering a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree have a new option available to them through OCAD University in Toronto. With enrolment starting in fall 2013, the institution now offers an interdisciplinary degree in Aboriginal Visual Culture that combines contemporary Aboriginal aesthetic and social studies with a comprehensive studio-based art education.

"Our new degree program is a major milestone among a series of initiatives we have developed over the last several years that address Indigenous culture and context at OCAD U," said Bonnie Devine, Founding Chair of OCAD U's Aboriginal Visual Culture Program. "Our work has involved creating an Aboriginal student centre and support services, as well as building our curriculum, including a minor."

Combining practice-specific and interdisciplinary studio courses in the Faculty of Art and the Faculty of Design with concentrations from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences in the visual, cultural, social and political history of Aboriginal peoples, the curriculum is designed to develop students' critical, creative and practical expertise in Aboriginal cultural and artistic practices.

"This program is the first of its kind in Canada, especially when considering Aboriginal culture within the spectrum of art and design education," said Kathryn Shailer, Dean of OCAD U's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies. "It gives students with an interest in Aboriginal issues and practices a degree program that allows them to develop their skills and knowledge, and will graduate students who will be thoughtful contributors to these concerns.

Also new next fall will be an Augmented OCAD U First Year Program for Aboriginal Students, delivered at Laurentian University in Sudbury. "Our Aboriginal Education Council set a priority for us to develop a program where students from Ontario's north can attend a full first-year program at a location roughly midway between their home communities and OCAD U's main campus in Toronto," said Devine. "Our goal is to create an environment for success, and this program will help with the challenges students experience in transitioning to the south. We're very pleased to be working with Laurentian, an institution with a well-developed support system for Aboriginal students that is committed to their success."

The new BFA in Aboriginal Visual Culture will be celebrated with a Symposium and Pow Wow on Tuesday, October 16 at OCAD University. All are invited to these free events. The symposium runs from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and the Pow Wow takes place in the afternoon, from 1 to 5 p.m.

Prospective students can apply for the Aboriginal Visual Culture BFA program now through the Ontario Universities Application Centre for the 2013/14 academic year.

Background:

Augmented OCAD U First Year Program for Aboriginal Students at Laurentian University
In an effort to improve access to art and design education for students at home in north-central and northern Ontario, OCAD University has collaborated with Laurentian University to create a full first-year program that will be delivered on the Laurentian University campus in Sudbury.

Although the students recruited for and admitted to this transition program will be OCAD U students, Laurentian students will also have access to the studio and visual culture that OCAD U will deliver in Sudbury. OCAD U students will have access to Laurentian's two-semester transition course for Aboriginal students.

Overall, the Augmented First-Year Program will assist Aboriginal students in negotiating university-level studies and ease the transition from small northern Ontario communities to urban living, first in a midsize and then in a major urban centre.

About OCAD University (OCAD U)
OCAD University is Canada's "university of imagination." The University, founded in 1876, is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. OCAD University is building on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies. In the Age of Imagination, OCAD University community members will be uniquely qualified to act as catalysts for the next advances in culture, technology and quality of life for all Canadians.

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Download this release as a PDF document.

Sarah Mulholland, Media & Communications Officer
416-977-6000 x327 (mobile x1327)

4th Annual Indigenous Visual Culture Symposium + Pow Wow

INVC poster
Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - 1:15pm to 7:30pm

All are welcome!

Connection to Land: Six Nations of the Grand River Territory
Graduate Gallery
205 Richmond St. W.
9:15 a.m. to noon

Speakers Include:
Rick Hill, historian, artist, curator, writer
Shelley Niro, artist, educator, filmmaker
Greg Staats, artist

Followed by:
OCAD University
Pow Wow + Graduate Celebration
Butterfield Park, 100 McCaul St.
1:00 pm to 3:30 pm

Steve Teekens, Master of Ceremonies
with the Red Spirit Singers

Venue & Address: 
OCAD University Graduate Gallery, 205 Richmond St. W. Butterfield Park, 100 McCaul St.
Email: 
<p><a href="mailto:mgeneral@ocadu.ca">mgeneral@ocadu.ca</a></p>

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