In advance of National Indigenous Peoples Day, a B.C. post-secondary institution is offering the public a chance to appreciate their creativity.
From June 8 to 10, the Aboriginal Gathering Place at Emily Carr University (520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver) will host the school’s first Indigenous Art Market. It will run on all three days from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the main floor with free admission.
In an Emily Carr University news release, the associate director of Aboriginal programs, Connie Watts, described the Indigenous Art Market as an exercise in community building.
“A lot of our students are returning to community from different kinds of displacement—Sixties Scoop, residential schools, foster care—so many different things that have taken them away from their culture,” Watts said.
“The more opportunities we can create for them to celebrate their own culture—which for us is through creative practices—the more they can start to explore how to respectfully shift this colonial world to make space for their own Indigenous knowledge to thrive,” she continued. “This market is a playground to see what that can look like.”
Participating artists include: Randall Barnetson, Leila Berg, Cheryl’s Trading Post (Cheryl Morgan & James Gregory), Leanne Inuarak-Dall, Nicole Johnston, Ashley Jones, Zoë Laycock, Maya Martin, Sydney Mercredi, Gerren Peters, Roan Reimer, Cochise Seitcham, Jessey Tustin, Christian Wayne, Nova Weipert, Ella White, and Vance Wright.
Laycock is also interim Aboriginal programs coordinator at the school.
“We’re all from different nations and different areas,” she said in the news release. “It’s always a real pleasure to see how everybody’s traditional or ancestral material practices are transformed into creative, contemporary art that’s new and fresh and unique.”
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