Join us live over Zoom for an afternoon of thoughtful exchange and collaborative discussion with Griffin’s inaugural BIPOC Studio Residency Award Winner, Josephine Lee, in conversation with Griffin’s Inaugural Indigenous Studio Residency Award Winner, Xwalacktun. The artists will deliver back-to-back presentations live from the studio, offering a glimpse into the research and works produced throughout their time at Griffin, followed by a group conversation and live audience Q/A.
Planned in conjunction with the Worldings Virtual residency program, Lee and Xwalacktun will be working onsite in Griffin’s studios for the months of August and September 2021. Throughout an intensive two-month creation period, they’ll have the opportunity to engage with the larger Worldings cohort comprised of Johannesburg-based artists Pebofatso Mokoena, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, and Wezile Mgibe. Hosted in partnership with the Bag Factory, a non-profit contemporary visual art organisation in Newtown, Johannesburg, the Worldings residency cohort will have the opportunity to meet virtually, build a relationship and engage in critical dialogue fostered through scheduled studio visits and discussion sessions, and to think through de-colonial futures together.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Josephine Lee
Informed by a lifetime of movement through the United States, Canada, and South Korea, Josephine Lee’s interdisciplinary practice is heavily informed by the psychic violence of cultural assimilation and naturalization through migration. Lee’s sculptures, installations, and performances, intersect narratives of dispossession and nationalism, making explicit how ideas of place are entangled within politics of citizenship and national identity. Within this framework, Lee’s materials and forms both signify and complicate overlapping identity formations, and notions of home and belonging. Lee’s current research examines how technological transformations connect directly to systems of political power, environmental degradation, and racial inequality. Furthermore, she explores how these technologies may be configured toward BIPOC and queer futures to enact cultural resilience and propose new orientations within bodies, ecologies, and architectural spaces.
Lee holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in science and fine arts. She has exhibited in Canada and the United States, as well as performed at documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany. Lee was recently awarded the Oscar Kolin Fellowship, the Vera G. List Sculpture Award, and a Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Award at the BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity. Lee received an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons in The New School’s Department of Art, Media, and Technology, and is currently a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, as well as a sessional lecturer at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the University of British Columbia.
Lee resides and works on the unceded and occupied ancestral and traditional lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Xwalacktun
Xwalacktun is a renowned Master Carver of Coast Salish ancestry, from the Squamish and Kwakiutl clans. His remarkable work and career extend over forty years and across numerous forms, including public art, sculpture, metalwork, jewelry, glass work, drawing and printmaking. He is the recipient of the Order of British Columbia, the FANS Honours Award from the North Vancouver Arts Council which acknowledged his commitments both locally and worldwide and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His public art awards are many, including more than thirty poles which have been presented throughout Scotland as a symbol of friendship between Canada and Europe, the 20 foot tall Squamish Pedestrian overpass spanning The Sea to Sky Highway, a red cedar memorial pole for Transport Canada, the major entry doors for the Gordon Smith Gallery Artists for Kids Building, a multimillion dollar home in Whistler featuring Xwalacktun’s four carved house posts, which received two Gold Georgie Awards in 2002, and a public work entitled, Sna7m Smanit (Spirit of the Mountain) in West Vancouver’s Ambleside Park completed in 2006.
His design work is also extensive: the 2012 Senior’s Olympics torch, medals and banners for the Nordic World Cup Winter Games in 2008 and 2009, elaborate snow boards for the First Nations Snowboard team, Rick Hansen’s 25th Anniversary print, Vancouver 2010 Olympic wear, carved double doors for B.C. Hydro’s Burnaby and Vancouver locations, cedar double doors for Harrison Hot Springs Resort’s Healing Springs Spa as well as collaborating with three artists in Beijing on work for the Canada Pavilion. He also created designs for the 2010 Olympic Bid box and created the initial 2010 winter sports icons.
Recent significant works can be seen at the West Vancouver Community Centre in a 30-foot conference room panel, the welcome figure at Whistler’s Peak to Peak building, University of Victoria (double doors), the Chancellor’s mace for Capilano University and Emily Carr University, where he also produced two outdoor house posts, and a welcome carving at West Vancouver Secondary School.