Awarded as “Artist of the year” by the Quebec-based artist collective “Les artistes pour la paix,” Aquil Virani’s collaborative art projects combine painting, drawing, filmmaking, writing, graphic design, installation, and participatory art processes and ask important questions about social and environmental justice. In 2021, he was named the first ever national artist-in-residence at the Canadian Museum of Immigration.
Virginia is a public and installation artist, currently working in Petawawa, Omàmìwininìwag -Algonquin territory. She is interested in forging a language rooted in her connection with family and the earth. Exploring the marrying of food into art with growing biological forms enveloping foraged local plant life, creating with the context of walking gently. Conversations mingle with the honouring of culture, family and connection to the land in a collaborative public walking tour of sculptures, stories and songs with traditional knowledge keepers Trish Nadjiwon-Meekins, Susan Staves (Schank) in Owen Sound of the Saukiing Anishnaabekiing (SON). She also may use a climate language of cardboard and plastic to initiate dialogue on what is next for us and the earth. Her ancestors reside in England and the Ukraine.
The conscient podcast is a series of conversations and monologues about art and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). Episode notes are translated.
I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.
Killa Watt’s performances and personas are neither created nor destroyed. Their performances are a constant source of transformation and evolution. They’re a blend of rock, nerd, geek and everything in between. Let Killa Watt resonate in your neuro-circuits.
Project SculptShore is a Art, Action, and Education initiative launching for its first of many campaigns on World Oceans Day June 8th 2022.
For our first installment we have partnered with local artist at the BernArt Maze in creating a life size baby North Atlantic Right Whale sculpture, modeled after the calf of Snow Cone, the North Atlantic Right Whale featured in the documentary, Last of the Right Whales. This interactive sculpture is fillable and will be used to collect washed-up debris during organized shoreline cleanups across the Maritimes. We will be engaging communities in shoreline cleanups by creating a social media sought-after summer selfie with our baby whale. Changing the narrative of conservation engagement from focusing on the problem to showing people that they are, and can continue to be an integral part of the solution, leaving them educated, empowered, excited to participate in other initiatives.
Two Birds Theatre is developing Apocalypse Play for performance in an urban park. It’s a serious comedy for terrifying times, an intergenerational auto-fictional collaboration about climate anxiety, grief and the legacy of arts activism and motherhood, created and performed by mother/daughter feminist theatre artists Natasha Greenblatt and Kate Lushington. Originally sparked by Natasha’s desire to interrogate her mother Kate’s satirical anti-nuclear performance pieces from the 1980’s (when she herself was born), this history has become especially potent now that Natasha is having her own child. Is it possible to make art and find connection, courage and community in the face of a precarious global future?
Monique is passionately dedicated to a theatrical practice as an act of resistance. Spun directly from the family-web of New York’s Spiderwoman Theater, her theatrical practice mines stories embedded in the body. Her first play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990 and is widely taught in curricula internationally. She is the co-editor, with Ric Knowles, of Staging Coyote’s Dream: An Anthology of First Nations Drama in English, vols. I & II and the upcoming vol.III, co-edited with Lindsay Lachance.
Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices brings together scholars, artists, activists, and community organizations from across the Americas to explore hemispheric performance as an artistic practice for addressing social and environmental justice. The Ecologies cluster considers site-based performance strategies that address politics of land (and agencies of its more-than human inhabitants), as well as spatial politics of occupying public spaces. We delve into legacies of transnational resource extraction and land politics.
No.9 is a cultural organization that provides youth with creative educational tools to address Climate Change and to foster dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Vulnerability and resiliency have been key themes in my 45 year career as a sculptor and a painter. Since the early 2000’s, I have been inspired by others including my friend Alanna Mitchell, author of Seasick: the Crisis of the Global Oceans and my network of Blackfoot women elders to explore human impact on the environment. As such, I’ve delved into the world of plankton, the Ponderosa Pine (a recent collaboration with poet Nancy Holmes) and its struggle to survive amidst the increasing presence of fires in Western Canada. I am intrigued by the intricate tangle of nature. My most recent installation, “SALVAGE: remnants of hope and despair”, featured at the The Art Gallery of Alberta in 2019-2020, reflected my deep need to explore the question of how to survive when everything around us collapses. This large installation, which had its first “performance” 40 years ago, is the connective tissue in much of my work and has literally grown alongside me as I’ve grown and struggled as a woman and an activist over decades. Interestingly, this massive piece just barely preceded the onslaught of Covid and continues to resonate as we attempt to regroup and move forward. I am currently working on its next format as well as continuing my painting explorations.
The Climate Art Web (CAW-WAC) is a grassroots network that brings together climate artists living in northern Turtle Island (Canada).
