Art From Here

About AFH

This audio is from our virtual studio visit with artist Wei Li in conversation with Steven Harris, and was originally recorded on October 26, 2021 over Zoom. Video episodes are available on the AFH website.

About the artist

Wei Li is an emerging artist whose experience of being an immigrant to Canada provides her with crucial inspiration in her practice. Having grown up in China and trained as a contemporary artist in the West, her dual cultural background challenges her to integrate different cultural perspectives and creates tensions through the contradictions inherent in forming a new hybrid identity.

Li completed her BFA (with Distinction) from the University of Alberta in 2017 and since has participated in shows/residency across Canada and the US. She had solo shows at the Art Gallery of St Albert and Harcourt House Artist Run Centre. In 2017, Li was a finalist in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and her work was shown at the National Gallery of Canada. Li will attend the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Residency in New York this year. She recently starts a new series to utilize modern technology to render digital surrealistic objects and creates a new vision of hybridity.

About the work

In my practice, I’m searching for a visual form to address the  complexity of hybrid identity, as well as the subjective and the emotional experience of living in a socially and ethnically diverse modern culture. The experience of being an immigrant to Canada provides me with crucial inspiration in my practice. This dual cultural background not only provides me with a broader ability to see diverse energies in society but also challenges me to integrate different cultural perspectives. The contradictions inherent in forming a new  hybrid identity have entered my work and continue to create tension within it. In my new digital series, I retexture the surface of the digital sculpted models that I create on the computer with photo scanned high-res human skin texture to grant those objects a sense of humanness, exploring the possibility of creating a new vision of hybridity.

About the co-host

Steven Harris recently retired from teaching at the University of  Alberta, after twenty years of working there. He published his book Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s: Art, Politics, and the Psyche with Cambridge University Press in 2004; co-edited a special issue of Art History with Natalie Adamson in 2016; and is one of five editors of the International Encyclopedia of Surrealism, which was published in three volumes from Bloomsbury in 2019. He also published a study of the 1959 International Exhibition of Surrealism in Art History in 2020, contributed an essay to the catalogue for the centennial exhibition of the Danish artist Asger Jorn for the Statens Museum for  Kunst in Copenhagen in 2014, and an essay to a special issue on Jorn for the journal October in 2012. He has written essays about  Sherri Chaba, Lyndal Osborne, and Lisa Turner for exhibitions in the  Edmonton area, and is currently working on another one about local artist Richard Boulet. His major work in progress concerns a singular group of artists, poets, dancers, and musicians who collaborated in Alabama from the 1970s to the 1990s, provisionally entitled Pataphysics and Surrealism in Alabama.

About AFH

This audio is from our virtual studio visit with artist Dwayne Martineau in conversation with aAron Munson, and was originally recorded on August 26, 2021 over Zoom. Video episodes are available on the AFH website.

About the artist

Dwayne Martineau is a visual artist, musician and composer. Two preoccupations dominate his work— the physicality of light, and experimental landscape photography. His work starts from an intimate  interaction with nature and a reverence for the complex and sometimes  frightening natural world around us that few stop to marvel at. Using  optics, mirrors and multiple exposures, Martineau introduces  distortions, symmetries, and animism into exhaustive studies of forests  and trees. His goal, as he describes it, is to "give us a chance to see  nature through a different lens, and understand that it’s got its own  thing going on." Dwayne is a member of the Frog Lake First Nation,  descended from early French and Scottish settlers, Plains Cree, and Métis.

About the work

I’m a bit hung up on the physicality of light. In my work, I use it as a tool to crack open perspective to explore my identity and connection to the natural world. My process involves probing, poking and prodding, until an a-ha! hits me. Recently, I’ve become very interested in that moment of creation— that singular inspiration, surprise, or insight that pushes someone to create something out of nothing. In visual art, where a piece might take years to complete, how do you bring a viewer closer to that moment of creation? That’s driven me to go big and immersive. I’m trying to move still images into three dimensional space; using structure, scale, motion, and sound to create little worlds that bring a viewer closer to that initial feeling of discovery.

STRANGE JURY is a jury trial by nature in the woods. It is an attempt to recreate a specific moment— it’s dusk in the forest, you enter a clearing... and flinch at the feeling of being watched... 60-foot sentinels living intense and meaningful lives surround you and challenge you... Why are you in our home? What is your relationship to this place? We are not your bathroom.

About the co-host

aAron Munson is a Canadian filmmaker, cinematographer and multimedia artist. His work has taken him from his personal studio to war zones, high-Arctic weather stations, reindeer nomad camps in Siberia, and the Arabian Desert. aAron's projects tackle extreme human experiences, both far from and close to home, utilizing film, video, photography and sound to create visual explorations relating to mental illness, memory, and the nature of consciousness.

About AFH

This audio is from our virtual studio visit with artists Alma Louise Visscher & Taryn Kneteman in conversation with Taiessa, and was originally recorded on June 26, 2021 over Zoom. Video episodes are available on the AFH website.

About the artists

Alma Louise Visscher (b. 1986 in the unceded traditional territory of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen First Nations/Surrey BC) creates fabric-based installations, soft sculptures, and drawings that examine material culture, soft architecture, and the language of abstraction through a feminist lens. Her work has been shown throughout North America, as well in Iceland and Germany: Sweet Lorraine Gallery (Brooklyn), Kimura Gallery (Alaska), and included in the 2020 Canadian Biennial of Fibre Art (Idea Exchange, Cambridge ON) as well as in Future Station, the 2015 Biennial of Alberta Art (Art Gallery of Alberta). She is thankful for support from Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Edmonton Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. As both artist, teacher and cultural worker, Alma has focused on supporting more accessible art programs, and with those using art as part of their mental health and wellness journey: She has worked with a wide variety of government agencies and non-profit organizations: teaching classes and leading workshops at day programs, continuing care centres, and with employment and youth support services.

Taryn Kneteman (b. 1989 in amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton) is a visual artist preoccupied with material transformation. She documents moving bodies and changes of state with sculpture, video, and printmaking, to consider the meaning of “wellness” as an embodied utopia where the curation of self and products promises control or escape. Kneteman holds a BFA from the University of Alberta and has exhibited work at the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton AB), Antimatter [media art] festival (Victoria BC), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff AB), and SNAP Gallery (Edmonton AB), as well as internationally. She was an artist in residence at Common Opulence 2 (Demmitt AB), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff AB), and Druckvereinigung Bentlage (Rheine, Germany). Most recently she was an artist in residence at Yorath House Artist Studio and Mitchell Art Gallery (Edmonton AB) in collaboration with Alma Louise Visscher. She lives and works in Edmonton, in Treaty 6 territory.

About the co-host

Taiessa (she/her) is a multi-discipline artist living in  Amiskwaciwâskahikan, so-called Edmonton. Taking an auto-ethnographic approach to her work, she explores themes of intimacy and nurturance.  Taiessa’s primary mediums include printmaking, soft sculpture, and long  conversations with friends. She obtained a Fine Art diploma with  distinction from Grant MacEwan University before completing her BFA at the University of Alberta. Taiessa recently participated in the Mitchell  Art Gallery’s Artist Exchange program, and when not in the studio spends her time as Production Supervisor at The Works.

About AFH

This audio is from our virtual studio visit with artist Matthew Cardinal in conversation with Lauren Crazybull, and was originally recorded on April 24, 2021 over Zoom. Video episodes are available on the AFH website.

About the artist

Matthew Cardinal is an amiskwaciy (Edmonton, Alberta) based musician, composer, and sound designer, known for his work with Polaris Short List  nominee group nêhiyawak. Cardinal’s solo full-length album “Asterisms” was released in October 2020 on Arts & Crafts. Cardinal’s music moves from delicate, minimalist pieces to vast drones and sparkling,  modular synthesizer beats. He has been performing music across the country for the last few years in various groups, as well as doing  soundtrack work in film and sound for art installations. Matthew also  works in photography, primarily using film, capturing dreamy moments in time and space, evoking a similar feel to his music.

About the work

This is an accumulative project I have been working on for a few years now but due to the social nature of it, it has been halted by COVID-19. I am collecting photographs, using an instant camera, of the right arms of various people from all across the country. I am currently at around 50 photos of a planned 200. These are photos of friends, artists, recording engineers, musicians, photographers, writers, business owners. People I respect and admire.

Arms because: I am unsure at this point. To me, it's nice to see arms highlighted. The arms we work with and hold with and love and create with.

About the co-host

Lauren Crazybull is an artist living in Edmonton, Alberta.  Lauren is Niitsitapi  and Dene with connections to Fort McKay First Nation, and a member of  Kainai Nation. Lauren’s practice focuses on painted portraiture,  experimental mapmaking and immersive installation. Their background  includes working with youth, radio programming and illustration. The  purpose of the work they have done thus far has been to examine the  function of colonialism in portraiture and other histories that aren’t  always truthful representations of Indigenous existence. As such,  Lauren’s portraits describe Indigenous people as they appear to them.  Through their work they celebrate nuanced experiences, and seek a  sincere understanding of the many facets of Indigenous life.

About AFH

This audio is from our virtual studio visit with artist Braxton Garneau in conversation with Aukje Kapteyn, and was originally recorded on February 25, 2021 over Zoom. Video episodes are available on the AFH website.

About the artist

Braxton Garneau is an emerging artist from Amiskwaciwâskahikan ‘Edmonton’ on Treaty 6 territory. In 2020, He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts, specializing in intermedia at the University of Alberta. His practice is rooted in an exploration of familial and collective histories.

Garneau primarily works in painting, installation, and printmaking, often distilling his own research through a combination of these methods. He has participated in several group exhibitions including Nice to Meet You in FAB Gallery at the University of Alberta, 5 Artists 1 Love exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta, and most recently It's About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900 - 1970 and Now at the Mitchell Gallery.

About the work

This is not a body of work. This is a collection of creative exercises; a response to a series of moments than have given me peace over the past several months. I needed to do something that was disconnected from the responsibilities of my regular practice. I needed to do anything other than obsess over the ever-growing list of racial injustices or confront my anxieties around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Making this series of facetime portraits was a creative way for me to self soothe. I began using video calls as references for these tiny family portraits, which reflected the dimensions (13.5cm x 6.5cm) I was becoming accustomed to viewing my family members at. The noticeable distortions from a phone camera lens became a motif throughout my portraits and emphasized this abstracted nature of “face to face” communication. These mini paintings became a way for me to create and connect without having to actively engage with the circumstances of 2020.

About the co-host

Aukje Kapteyn is a 72-year-old woman whose chosen career has been working with First Nations communities as a counselling therapist for the past 32 years. She is mother of three children and grandmother of seven.  She is the oldest of a family of eight children and immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands with her family at age 12. She was raised surrounded by an extended family of talented musicians, photographers, artists and writers. While appreciating music and art, her own preferable medium is writing.  She has published poetry, feature articles, and stories. Her work in First Nations Communities has given her deeper insight into the long-term effects of colonialism, racism and threat of cultural demise. She has written poetry and articles to reflect this. Strong family ties have superseded the far-flung distance of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Family gatherings have nourished the creativity, playfulness, humour, and tenacity of family members to pursue their own dreams.