Badlands Art Department, Drumheller, AB
Rosebud River valley
The Canadian art landscape is ever-changing. Places + Spaces keeps you informed of established and up-and-coming exhibition venues across the country including museums, galleries, artist-run centres, and more. This month, we hear from Miruna Drăgan and Jason de Haan, founders of Badlands Art Department in Drumheller.
What is the history and mandate of your organization?
We founded Badlands Art Department in 2021. B.A.D. is a multifaceted artist residency, studio, press, and exhibition space located at our home, an acreage alongside the Rosebud River in Drumheller, Alberta, on Treaty 7 territory, the ancestral lands of the Blackfoot confederacy. As part of our activities here, we invite artists to research and respond to various conditions of this unique site – including its history of coal and clay mining, continuing extractive industries of natural gas and cryptocurrency, as well as its paleontological and geological significance. Layered with these unfolding ecosystems, B.A.D. fosters events and activities that take place on or about this land. We are committed to creating opportunities for artists, elders, scholars, stewards, scientists, ecologists, and any others who desire to learn from, teach about, or contribute to this place.
What’s a highlight of the neighbourhood where you are located?
Artists-in-residence Anna Thomas & Doha Chebib Lindskoog overlooking the Rosebud River valley
The Alberta Badlands, known for their abundance of Cretaceous fossils, including the remains of many dinosaurs, are formed by the Red Deer and Rosebud river-valleys. Badlands Art Department is located near the town of Drumheller, home of the Royal Tyrell Museum, a world-renowned paleontological institution. Just down the road from us is the Rosedeer Hotel and Last Chance Saloon (established in 1913), a popular summer destination in the ghost town of Wayne. But most impressive is the dramatic landscape surrounding us, where multiple exposed layers of coal, stone and ash describe millions of years of geology.
What’s your favourite part of running a residency/studio?
Kuh De Rosario, na dadaanan, 2025, installation view
We’ve been so intellectually and creatively fulfilled by the artists we’ve worked with and have been especially grateful for their new and varied perspectives on this place. Our recent visitor, Kuh del Rosario, created a body of work during her two-week residency with materials found and manipulated entirely on-site, then presented it in our gallery. Some of these works will soon be exhibited in an upcoming group show at Contemporary Calgary.
How do you find out about new artists?
Miruna is a professor at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, so we are always meeting artists at early stages of their careers and following their development. And over the years, through our own travels and exhibitions as artists, we’ve developed relationships in Canada and beyond (most recently in Mexico), and are grateful for the ability to participate in these networks.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Quilting workshop with Lindsay Sutton, July 2025
Since moving to the Badlands from Calgary four years ago and initiating B.A.D., we’ve been developing infrastructure to support increasingly ambitious programming. So far this has included the renovation and repurposing of several spaces. Right now, we are in the process of converting a small barn into a live/work space for artists in residence, and we’re hoping to have it operational by next summer. We’ve been overwhelmed with community support through donations, including ceramics wheels and kilns, darkroom photography equipment, stained glass materials and tools, as well as various tools for fabrication in wood and metal. Five years from now we plan to have multiple studio spaces equipped for many kinds of material research, experimentation, and production. We’re also planning to expand our programming, including artist-led workshops, into more public spaces around Drumheller, as well as the installation of artworks in the landscape.
What excites you about your upcoming projects?
Hermitess
Sky Gooden, the founding publisher of Momus, is currently here for a week, researching and writing. In a few weeks we’ll be hosting a musical performance by Jennifer Crighton, the lead harpist and vocalist of Hermitess, and hope to do more similar programming in the future. We are also currently planning residencies for next year with several international artists, including Lorena Mal and Pablo Rasgado (Mexico City), Lucy Pawlak (Mexico City), and Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir and Erling Klingenberg (Reykjavik). Overall, we’re excited to expand the B.A.D. network and to support and present a thoughtful variety of activities.