Aiden Kirkegaard

2024 Griffin x ECU Studio Award Winner
In residency from May 1st to June 30th

Aiden Kirkegaard is a painter working in Vancouver and a recent 2024 MFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Aiden received her BFA with a Minor in Art History from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in 2020. As a painter, Aiden’s work explores how the physical and material processes of painting can elicit memory and dreaming. Painting for Aiden becomes a mode in which she accesses personal memories and imagines alternative realities. Her physical studio space becomes a dwelling place for dreaming. The actions of mixing acrylic paint, engaging with colour, building shaped canvases and putting brush to canvas all encompass a process-based approach to making. In 2023, Aiden received the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s Award (CGS M) for her research studies at Emily Carr and the Gathie Falk Visual Arts scholarship in 2022. Aiden also received the Medal in Fine Arts in 2020 from the University of British Columbia. Aiden has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art and has an upcoming solo show at Dal Schindell Gallery in July 2024. Aiden has also participated in group exhibitions at the Seymour Art Gallery, the Lake Country Art Gallery, the Fina Gallery, Gallery Vertigo, the Rotary Arts Centre, and the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art. Aiden acknowledges that she is a guest creating work on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.