CBC Arts presents an interactive story about family, migration and the tales we pass on through generations.
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Hi, Art!

Sunday, October 01, 2023

Hi, Art!

Sunday, October 01, 2023

Hi, art lovers!

 
Illustration for Eighty Thousand Steps. (Title visible.) Background is blue, as if painted in watercolour. Black line illustrations of paper airplanes, crumpled papers, letters, photographs.

Jeffrey Flores

 
I have a podcast reco for you, and if you never leave the house without your AirPods, it’s going to be the perfect thing for your Sunday. Eighty Thousand Steps is a new interactive adventure from Vancouver-raised writer Crystal Chan, and we premiered it on the site last week. To hear it, you’ll want to download the app (via Google Play or the Apple Store). And then, well, you’ll have to go for a walk.

Walking is just a part of the storytelling experience. In fact, the app was built for it. (It syncs up with your phone’s pedometer so the audio only plays when you’re in motion.) 

Why is that important? There’s a very personal reason behind that artistic choice, so before you dive into the journey, I’d suggest reading this in-depth essay by Crystal, who based the podcast on tales her grandmother would tell her when she was small. 

Another CBC Arts premiere to share: watch Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s cover of Willie Dunn’s I Pity the Country, which arrived just ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Leanne and the video’s co-directors, Lisa Jackson and Conor McNally, spoke with CBC Arts about the project, and how they aimed to honour and capture the legacy of Indigenous resistance. Read that conversation here. CBC marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation yesterday with a lineup of Indigenous-led programming. Much of that content is now available online, including CBC Gem’s Truth & Reconciliation Collection, a library of docs, features and series honouring the history, heritage and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples.
 

And because we promised you eye candy ...

 
Potrait of a seated figure. Their face and body is covered with multicoloured beaded works in traditional Indigenous patterns.

Dana Claxton

Dana Claxton is this year’s winner of the Audain Prize, a $100,000 award that recognizes a senior artist’s contributions to the arts. She was on The Current last week to discuss the prize — and the role of art in reconciliation. This image is from her 2018-2019 series Headdress, a project she referred to while discussing how her artwork challenges stereotypes. “My hope is that [viewers will] think: Well, what am I looking at? What is this stuff? What does it mean? And what’s my relationship, not only to the material culture of Indigenous people, but what is my relationship to Indigenous people?”
 
Photo of a 40-foot public artwork (All Our Relations) in the process of being built near a waterfront location in Hamilton. The piece resembles a metal ladder, but displays floral designs made of enormous glass beads of many colours.

Angela DeMontigny

All Our Relations, a public art project led by Cree-Métis artist Angela DeMontigny, was unveiled at Pier 8 on Hamilton’s waterfront yesterday. The piece is comprised of five panels (that are each 40 feet tall) illustrated with glass-bead designs that reference Indigenous teachings (more on the meaning behind the designs here).
 
Daytime photo. A woman, the artist Cheyenne Rain LeGrande, stands in a field of tall grasses. She is wrapped in a shimmering shawl made of aluminum tabs. It is fringed with long pastel rainbow ribbons that unfurl widely around her. She wears pastel shorts and large pastel hair barettes on top of her head. She looks directly at the camera, her lips pursed.

Cheyenne Rain LeGrande

You’re looking at Mullyanne Nȋmito Maskotêw by Cheyenne Rain LeGrande, who’s among the nominees for the 2023-24 Salt Spring National Art Prize. Dazzled by what she’s wearing in the photo? Cheyenne made that shawl using tabs from old beer and pop cans. In this 2022 Q&A, Cheyenne, who’s a Nehiyaw Isko artist from Bigstone Cree Nation, talked about some of the ideas that inspired it. “Fancy Shawl is a traditional powwow dance from my territory. It’s important for me to embed my identity with what I create. I wasn’t raised around traditional dances, so I felt like being able to reuse an object, and recycle it, spoke to how I would create a fancy shawl if I could. It also felt like armour, because it’s made of aluminum.”
 
 

You've got to see this

 
 
 
Medium close-up portrait of the artist Séamus Gallagher, a white person with a stubbly beard and floppy brown hair who smiles with a closed-mouth smile, looking at the camera.
Courtesy of Séamus Gallagher

The hottest item for back to school: a Sobey Art Award nomination

 
Now in the running for Canada’s top art prize, Séamus Gallagher started grad school this fall. “It’s definitely helped my imposter syndrome,” they laugh.
 
A collection of images of roses, generated by AI. The images have been assembled into a collage resembling a human eye.
Sanaz Mazinani

Shocked and amazed by image generators like DALL-E 2, this artist built her own AI model

 
Sanaz Mazinani's new exhibition is the result of that experiment. An Impossible Perspective is appearing at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto until Nov. 4.
 
Michelle Buteau as Mavis in Survival of the Thickest. Appearing in a medium shot, Mavis is a Black woman dressed in a plunging bra and dark opera gloves. She wears glittery eye makeup and a high ponytail with thick curls that cascade past her shoulders. She is in a nightclub and smiles looking at something out of the frame. She is bathed in purple light.

Jocelyn Prescod/Netflix

 

Is fat representation finally starting to improve?

 
The Netflix series Survival of the Thickest is the story of a fat woman living her best life, and after watching just one episode, CBC Arts contributor Shailee Koranne realized something huge: she’d never seen anything like it.
 

Follow this artist

 
 
 
Instagram

Emily Kewageshig

@emilykewageshig
Aerial photo of a basketball court mural. The ground is painted in shades of orange and yellow. The head of a turtle, painted in the style of the Woodland School, is visible from beyond the three-point line.

Emily Kewageshig

Emily designed CBC’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation logo in 2021. (Read about that project here.) Since then, she’s been busy with lots of big assignments. I mean, just look at this — an entire basketball court! Emily painted it with youth from Sheguiandah First Nation on Manitoulin Island.
 

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Oh! One more thing before I go! Who’s in Toronto and looking for something to do on Tuesday night? Meridian Hall will be hosting a sneak preview of Swan Song, a new documentary series that follows Karen Kain and the National Ballet of Canada as they bring Swan Lake to the stage. (Maybe you remember hearing about it at TIFF?) CBC will be airing the series in November, but for Tuesday night’s event, several of the featured dancers (including Karen Kain) plus filmmakers Chelsea McMullan and Sean O’Neill will be in the house for a moderated chat. There’ll be a live performance, too. Info here!

I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time!

 
XOXO CBC Arts
XOXO CBC Arts
 
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