Online Panel Discussion: falling through our fingers

Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University

Daze Jefferies, resurfacing you torn-together, 2023, nylon hosiery washed ashore in the Bay of Exploits, vinyl poetry, courtesy of the artist

falling through our fingers
Online Panel Discussion

September 13, 2023 @ 7:00 pm ADT
This is a free event and open to the public
Live automatic captions will be available
Registration

Featuring artists Excel Garay, Daze Jefferies, B.G-Osborne, Racquel Rowe, Kelsey Street, Faune Ybarra and exhibition curator Emily Critch, this online panel discussion will explore issues and themes raised in the exhibition falling through our fingers, which considers the complexities of preservation and the possibilities of archives. Each of the artists included will discuss new work that mediates institutional, personal, and familial collections to engage with intergenerational dialogues, undocumented labour, diasporic histories, historical erasure, grief, and joy. In locating and weaving threads between archival interstices, the exhibition acknowledges the interconnectedness of past, present, and future.

Excel Garay, (left to right) bleeding heart phantasm, 2023, Mga Nanawag Og Laing Kalibutan (Those Who Call for Another World), 2021, Mango Breath, 2023, oil and acrylic on canvas, enamel paint on plastic planters, tropical plants, courtesy of the artist

Emily Critch (she/they) is a Mi’kmaw and settler curator, artist, and writer from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk Territory (Bay of Islands, NL) currently based in St. John’s. Their recent curatorial projects include these are our monuments (2021) with the Owens Art Gallery, mitsujuk | kussikuashu | kpitni’sewet | they sew with the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador (2019) and the Tina Dolter Gallery (2020), and Visiting: Logan MacDonald at Grenfell Art Gallery (2018).

Excel Garay is an artist-curator and community worker operating on Mi’kma’ki in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS). Her work, in these intersecting roles, is informed by mutual desires discovered through acts of collaboration and her lived experience. She graduated with distinction from NSCAD University with a double degree in Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Bachelor of Fine Arts (2022). Garay’s expanded painting practice enhances the spectral state of common everyday objects to reveal their contemporary implications, haunting histories, and their speculative potentials.

Daze Jefferies (she/her) is a white settler artist, writer, and educator born and raised in the Bay of Exploits on the northeast coast of rural Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). Working with archives, beach wash-up, queer ephemera, oral histories, sound, poetry, sculpture, theory, performance, and illustration, her research-based creative practice engages with the ocean as a body becoming to form washy, wayward, and withheld counter-narratives of queer + trans + sex-worker worlds at the water’s edge. Her research-creation and multidisciplinary projects have been exhibited and performed throughout Atlantic Canada.

B.G-Osborne is a gender variant autistic settler of Scottish and British descent. They were born and raised on Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Territory, and they are a current, uninvited guest on the Southeast coast of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). Osborne’s ongoing projects seek to address the complexities and revisionary potential of gender-variant embodiment/representation, and to unpack and share their experiences with mental illness, neurodivergence, and familial bonds. They place great importance in showcasing their work in artist-run centres and non-commercial galleries across Turtle Island.

Racquel Rowe is an interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados currently residing in Canada. She has exhibited across Canada and holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo. Her artistic practice and research are continuously influenced by many aspects of history, matrilineal family structures, diasporic communities, and her upbringing in Barbados. Her work takes the form of performance, audio, video, oral storytelling, and other multi-media installations.

Kelsey Street is a Mi’kmaw artist from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk Territory (Bay of Islands, NL). She has an interdisciplinary arts practice working in a variety of forms such as beadwork, textile/craft, and printmaking processes, often touching upon themes of community, home, and resettlement. She has participated in residencies and exhibitions provincially and internationally (Canada, UK) and was recently the artist-in-residence and presented a solo exhibition at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, NL.

Currently situated in the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Waututh nations, Faune Ybarra is a diasporic artist and researcher originally from Oaxaca and Mexico City. Due to the experience of constantly moving and adapting, Ybarra conceives of her body as a site of translation from whence she attempts to communicate with the other-than-human. Her iterative practice rejects the (art)object as a given outcome and instead speculates on how nomadic creative methodologies converge to document motion.

For more information about the exhibition and artists, click here.

We would like to acknowledge that the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, is located within the traditional territory of Mi’kma’ki, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Mi’kmaq. Our relationship and our privilege to live on this territory was agreed upon in the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1725 to 1752. Because of this treaty relationship, it is to be acknowledged that we are all Treaty People and have a responsibility to respect this territory.

Owens Art Gallery
Mount Allison University
61 York Street Sackville, NB, E4L 1E1 • 506-364-2574
owens@mta.ca
www.owensartgallery.com
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Monday to Friday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Admission is Free

The Owens is partially accessible. The stairs from the entrance nearest the University Chapel have a handrail. There is also ramp access at this entrance, however, the ramp is steep. The stairs to the entrance off York Street have a handrail, but no ramp, and are covered with temporary wood treads. The main floor of the Owens is wheelchair accessible. Our second-floor gallery and gendered bathrooms are located in the basement and are not accessible. Two flights of stairs lead to each of these floors. LED lights are used throughout the building. The Owens welcomes guide dogs and other service animals. The closest accessible parking spaces are located on York Street across from the Owens. For detailed information on venue access, please visit our Accessibility page.

If you have any questions about your visit, please email owens@mta.ca or call (506) 364-2574.