Orion Series presents scholar Heather Igloliorte

by | Mar 5, 2021 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, Graduate, indigenous, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, Undergraduate, Visual Arts

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Heather Igloliorte

Research Chair, Circumpolar Indigenous Arts

7:30 – 9:00 pm (PST) Wednesday, March 10 2021

 

Free & open to the public via Zoom

Presented by UVic’s Department of Visual Arts
For more information on this lecture please email: visualarts@uvic.ca 

Advancing Indigenous knowledge 

Dr. Heather Igloliorte (Inuk, Nunatsiavut) holds the Tier 1 University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts and is an associate professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia. She also serves as the special advisor to the provost on advancing Indigenous knowledges, and in this role contributes to the efforts of the university’s Indigenous Directions Leadership Group. Her teaching and research interests center on Inuit and other Native North American visual and material culture, circumpolar art studies, performance and media art, the global exhibition of Indigenous arts and culture, and issues of colonization, sovereignty, resistance and resurgence. 

Indigenous futures

Heather is the principal investigator of the $2.5M, seven-year SSHRC Partnership Grant “Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq/ Pijariuqsarniq Project” (2018-2025), ​which aims to empower circumpolar Indigenous peoples to become leaders in the arts through training and mentorship. With Professor Jason Edward Lewis, Heather also Co-Directs the Indigenous Futures Cluster (IIF) in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology. Through Milieux, Igloliorte works with collaborators and students to explore how Indigenous people are imagining the future of their families and communities. 

Heather has been a curator for 14 years, ​and currently has three exhibitions touring nationally and internationally; she is also the lead guest curator of the inaugural exhibition of INUA, the new Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Heather publishes frequently: she has co-edited special issues of journals PUBLIC 54: Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital (2016) and RACAR: Continuities Between Eras: Indigenous Arts (2017), and her essay “Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum,” ​was awarded the 2017 Distinguished Article of the Year from Art Journal. 

Igloliorte currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Circle for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, working on the development of the new national Inuit Art Centre; is the President of the Board of Directors of the Inuit Art Foundation; and serves on the Board of Directors for North America’s largest Indigenous art historical association, the Native North American Art Studies Association, the Faculty Council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and the Nunavut Film Development Corporation, among others. Heather has previsously  served as an executive member of the board of directors for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and as the president of Ottawa’s artist-run-centre Gallery 101, in addition to other advisories, juries and councils. 

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Free and open to the public  |  Seating is limited (500 Zoom connections) |  Visit our online events calendar at www.uvic.ca/events

Orion Series presents artistic director Ravi Jain

by | Mar 2, 2021 | Events, Graduate, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Theatre, Undergraduate

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Ravi Jain

Artistic director, Why Not Theatre

“Asking Why Not? Challenging Assumptions
and Unlocking Possibilities”

12:30 – 1:30 pm (PST) Monday, March 8 2021

 

Free & open to the public via Zoom

Presented by UVic’s Department of Theatre
For more information on this lecture please email: theatre@uvic.ca 

Why not? 

Toronto-based stage director Ravi Jain is a multi-award-winning artist known for making politically bold and accessible theatrical experiences in both small indie productions and large theatres. Ravi was twice shortlisted for the 2016 and 2019 Siminovitch Prize, and won the 2012 Pauline McGibbon Award for Emerging Director and the 2016 Canada Council John Hirsch Prize for direction.

As the founding artistic director of Why Not Theatre, Ravi has established himself as an artistic leader for his inventive productions, international producing/collaborations and innovative producing models, which are aimed to better support emerging artists to make money from their art.

Challenging assumptions and unlocking possibilities has been the hallmark of Ravi Jain’s artistic vision. In this talk Ravi will share how Why Not grew into a national institution through innovative art, community building and provoking systems change.

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

 

Free and open to the public  |  Seating is limited (500 Zoom connections) |  Visit our online events calendar at www.uvic.ca/events

Orion Series presents artist & scholar Diane Roberts

by | Mar 1, 2021 | Events, Graduate, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Theatre, Undergraduate

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Diane Roberts

Artist practitioner & researcher

 

“The Arrivals Legacy Project:

Weaving New Ways of Knowing” 

 

12:30 – 1:30 pm (PST)
Tuesday, March 2, 2021 

Free & open to the public via Zoom

Presented by UVic’s Department of Theatre
For more information on this lecture please email: theatre@uvic.ca 

 

 

The Arrivals Legacy Project

Artist practitioner, researcher and scholar Diane Roberts has collaborated with innovative theatre visionaries and interdisciplinary artists for the past 30 years. Her directorial and dramaturgical work has been seen on stages across Canada and her reputation as a mentor, teacher and community collaborator is nationally and internationally recognized.

Her celebrated Arrivals Legacy Process has birthed a vision for theatre that encourages African and Indigenous ways of knowing as a stepping stone to creative expression. 

 

Collaborative responsibility

As a decolonizing process, the Arrivals Personal Legacy process enacts an approach to collaborative responsibility that is geared toward particular centres of gravity that are rooted in the body and infused by the spirit. She is a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, a current PhD candidate at Concordia University, and was awarded the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship in 2020.

Roberts’ presentation will navigate between her voice as an artist and researcher to construct a profile of The Arrivals Legacy Project as a viable tool for addressing the ruptures caused by migration, forced or otherwise, and for creating new epistemologies or legacies of knowing that might inspire a future imaginary that is rooted in the past but not bound by it. Learn more about The Arrivals Legacy Project at www.arrivalslegacy.com.

 About the Orion Fund

 Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

 The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Free and open to the public  |  Seating is limited (500 Zoom connections) |  Visit our online events calendar at www.uvic.ca/events

Orion Series presents scenographer Rachel Hann

by | Feb 17, 2021 | Events, Graduate, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Theatre, Undergraduate

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Dr. Rachel Hann

Cultural scenographer

 

“For Atmospherics: Designing Feeling
in an Era of Climate Crisis”

 

12:30 – 1:30 pm (PST)
Tuesday, February 23, 2021 

Free & open to the public via Zoom

Presented by UVic’s Department of Theatre
For more information on this lecture please email: theatre@uvic.ca 

 

The material culture of scenography

Dr. Rachel Hann is a cultural scenographer and senior lecturer in performance and design based at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. Her research is focused on the material cultures of scenography, climate crisis and trans performance.

Rachel is author of Beyond Scenography (Routledge 2019), which was shortlisted for the Prague Quadrennial 2019 Publication Prize. In 2013, she co-founded the research network Critical Costume and in 2014 co-edited a special issue of Scene (Intellect Books) on costume. Rachel’s work in the formation of this network was shortlisted for the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Early Career Prize 2017 for “leadership in costume and practice research”. Rachel holds a PhD in theatre architecture from the University of Leeds and BA in Drama from the University of Hull.

 

Designing feeling in an era of climate crisis  

Atmospheres are vital to the practice of scenography. Blending emotion and feeling with technologies and materials, atmospheres confuse established models of binary aesthetics (of human and world, artifice and nature) that reflect a materialist uncertainty in an era of climate crisis. Rachel’s presentation will offer a proposal for “atmospherics” as a process-based, non-binary approach to stage aesthetics. 

Put simply, it is high time to rethink binary stage aesthetics—such as stage-auditorium, character-actor, female-male, Western-Other—to offer models of designing feeling that celebrate the indeterminacy of atmospherics as a model for future eco-decolonial scenographies.  

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Free and open to the public  |  Seating is limited (500 Zoom connections) |  Visit our online events calendar at www.uvic.ca/events

Orion Series presents poet Louise Halfe

by | Feb 17, 2021 | Events, Graduate, indigenous, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Undergraduate, Writing

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Louise Bernice Halfe

Parliamentary Poet Laureate

 

3:30 – 5:00 pm (PST)
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 

Free & open to the public
Register at writingevents@uvic.ca  

Presented by UVic’s Department of Writing
For more information on this lecture please email: writing@uvic.ca 

 

A process of reconciliation 

Louise Bernice Halfe was born in Two Hills, Alberta. Her Cree name is Sky Dancer. She was raised on the Saddle Lake Indian Reserve and attended Blue Quills Residential School. In February 2021, she became Canada’s first Parliamentary Poet Laureate to come from an Indigenous community. “Being selected as the poet for Parliament is, in fact, a process of reconciliation,” Halfe said in an interview on CBC Radio’s The House. “It’s a step forward for sure. There is no doubt about that.”

Earning acclaim 

Halfe’s first published poetry appeared in Writing the Circle: Women of Western Canada and she has since published five collections: 1994’s Bear Bones & Feathers received the Canadian People’s Poet Award and was a finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award; 1998’s Blue Marrow was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Pat Lowther Award and Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award. The Crooked Good was published in 2007.

Her most recent collection, Burning in this Midnight Dream (2016) details Halfe’s personal response to the Truth and Reconciliation process, how the experiences of residential school children continue to haunt those who survive and how the effects are passed down for generations. The book won three Saskatchewan Book Awards and the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award. 

Her latest poetry collection, awâsis – kinky and dishevelled, is forthcoming from Brick Books in April 2021. 

Sharing her teachings

Halfe has served as poet laureate of Saskatchewan, the Elder of the University of Saskatchewan and is widely recognized for weaving Cree language and teachings into her works. A collection of Halfe’s work, Sohkeyihta, containing poems written across the expanse of her career, was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press in 2018.

Halfe has a Bachelor of Social Work, and received a Honorary Degree of Letters from Wilfrid Laurier University. She currently works with Elders in an organization called Opikinawasowin (“raising our children”). Halfe lives outside of Saskatoon with her husband. 

 

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Free and open to the public  |  Seating is limited (500 Zoom connections) |  Visit our online events calendar at www.uvic.ca/events