Join Griffin Art Projects for a virtual panel discussion between three Indigenous curators as they discuss their methodologies and approaches to curation.

Lorilee Wastasecoot (Legacy Art Gallery), Aliya Boubard (Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art), and Jocelyn Piirainen (National Gallery of Canada) will discuss their approaches to the curation of Indigenous art within a field still largely dominated by colonial values of art, culture, and space. Galleries and museums hold a long history of showcasing Indigenous artworks as detached from their creators, as relics of times past, and held to definitions of ‘art’ and ‘value’ not compatible with Indigenous cultures and value systems. In reality, Indigenous art is still widely practiced in both traditional and innovative ways, and Indigenous artists and curators are reclaiming control over how their art forms are shown to the world. Panelists will provide insight into their past projects, curatorial methodologies, and about the overlap between Indigenous art and the Western fine arts world. The discussion will be facilitated by Griffin’s Young Canada Works Indigenous Public Programming and Marketing Intern, Jordanna George, and followed by a Q+A period.

Join “Through a BIPOC Lens” series’ artist in residence, Rain Cabana-Boucher, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!

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, St. Boniface, and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She currently lives and works on the stolen land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xwməθkwəy̓əm Nations. Cabana-Boucher is a recent recipient of the Takao Tanabe prize for emerging British Columbia Painters and the First Peoples Individual Artist grant. 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.

Join the recipient of the Griffin Art Projects’ BIPOC Studio Award 2023, Natalie Purschwitz, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!

Natalie Purschwitz is an artist living and working on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people. Her research is propelled by material exploration drawing on modes of making that include collecting, accumulating, arranging, editing, and writing. She is curious about the ways in which the landscape is shaped by humans and nonhumans, through systems of organization, networks of support and ruptures within these systems. By reconfiguring everyday objects, elemental substances and other lively combinations, she attempts to create conditions for material events.