Charmaine Lurch is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work draws attention to human-environmental relationalities. Lurch’s paintings and sculptures are conversations on infrastructures and the spaces and places we inhabit. Working with a range of materials and reimagining our surroundings—from bees and taxi cabs to The Tempest and quiet moments of joy, Lurch subtly connects Black life and movement globally.
Hannah Gelderman (she/her) is a settler of Dutch descent, living in the region called Amiskwaciwâskahikan, also known as Edmonton, Alberta. She works in the arts as an educator, illustrator and visual artist. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art and Design at the University of Alberta in 2012, and then began to work with a variety of organizations to develop and facilitate art programs for children, youth and adults. Alongside this, Hannah is involved in the climate justice movement, to which she brings extra enthusiasm for arts-based organizing. In 2020 Hannah graduated with a Master of Education in Adult Education and Community Engagement from the University of Victoria. She focussed her research on the role of participatory visual arts in this era of climate crisis, which came together as a series of zines titled Collective Arts for Climate Justice.
Félix Bernier is an interdisciplinary artist now based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax with a background in software engineering. His work explores the human connection to land and the impact of digital technologies to our physical environment and to human interactions. Using photography, installation, sculptural elements and digital technologies, Félix presents the complex inter-relations of the physical and the digital as sources of interrogation. Félix completed his Master of Fine Arts at NSCAD University in 2021.
Ambient improvisational ensemble New Hermitage imagines a future in which the climate crisis has decimated the population of the Earth, and dangerously high levels of pollution have rendered the cities of the world uninhabitable. The surviving humans are forced to live in nomadic clans, wandering the sparse wilderness in constant struggle to claim what little natural resources remain. However, a few solitary people have returned to the cities. Armed with patience and tenderness, these new hermits balance technology with natural wisdom to work with nature to restore their environment. The music of New Hermitage is the soundtrack to their survival, incorporating what these individuals might hear among the crumbling cities they call home.
Through audio and video recordings, Anju Singh has been exploring the sounds, currents, and textures of moving waters in Coast Salish Territories for the creation of new works of manipulated video/sound art pieces. The pieces intend to investigate her personal relationship with the moving waters and messages that they carry. Anju’s previous works include using instruments and sound sources to connect with and give new voices to natural landscapes, water, trees, and plants.
Maedeh Mosaverzadeh is an Iranian Visual artist based in Calgary, Canada. She received her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Calgary. Maedeh creates illustrations and animations to discuss issues surrounding plastic pollution. She explores ways in which art can evoke emotions and bring awareness about environmental issues and problems caused in our troubled age. In pursuing her endeavor for increasing general awareness about plastic pollution and reaching out to more people, Maedeh has created a social media platform called A Yellow Land. In this platform, she shares her artistic practice and ideas.
Audrey Lane Cockett is a filmmaker, artistic director, spoken word poet, ecologist, and outdoor educator based in Treaty 7 Land. Their work is rooted in wild and they are a passionate advocate for mental health awareness, love, and intersectional care for community and the natural world.
They believe in art as an avenue for learning, healing, connecting and transforming.
HERD: Inuit Voices on Caribou is a research-based film project led by Inuit from the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador, Canada, with the goal of documenting, preserving, and sharing Inuit knowledge and experiences with caribou. Between 2016-2022, we talked with, filmed, and photographed over 80 Inuit from across 12 distinct communities in Labrador; we documented caribou and landscapes from various parts of Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut; and we collected archival multimedia from decades in the past. As a result, we gathered over 100 hours of footage, thousands of photographs, and countless memories from knowledge holders who were involved in this work. More information, photos, and writings can be found at: www.herdfilm.ca
Marie-Soleil Provençal is a visual artist from Québec, currently in Nova Scotia. Her work addresses the relationships that we have with our surroundings, an eco-system composed of humans and non-humans. She does so by integrating mundane materials such as concrete, hay, and second-hand furniture, into her sculptures and installations. She has been a studio assistant, a technician, and a professor in visual arts for the past few years from Québec to Newfoundland. More recently, she worked as a research assistant to repurpose plastic beach trash and explore alternative sustainable materials made from local resources such as seaweed, oyster shell, and wood ash.
Hitoko Okada is an interdisciplinary fibre artist, curator, facilitator, and storyteller. Her work explores the politics and cultural significance of Japanese heritage textile folk crafts, fashion, gendered and racialized garment labour from historical, critical, and anti-capitalist perspectives. She engages ancient Japanese practices of thread-making and shifu weaving to commune with ancestral knowledge and relationship to cloth, plants, earth, and spirit. She works on an urban organic farm and is growing her first urban scale crop of Japanese indigo. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and events in Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, and Burlington. She is the recipient of multiple grants and awards including Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council of the Arts and City of Hamilton Arts Awards.
