FIBRE ART, RELATIONAL AESTHETICS & GLOBALIZATION

Fibre art, relational / radicant aesthetics & globalization

Public presentation and discussion with artists: Carissa Carman, jenna dawn, Suzen Green, Javiera Ovalle Sazie

Moderated by Lisa Vinebaum

Saturday, April 16th, 5pm – 7pm, Concordia University, VA Building Room 433, 1395 René-Lévesque Blvd. West, Montréal, QC

Four artists working across fibres, collaboration, performance, installation, site-specific and public art explore intersections between current fibre art practice and social practice in the larger context of globalization. This presentation explores current models of artistic production, sustainability, and the creation of alternative exchange economies in contemporary fibre art practices, as an antidote to Bourriaud’s notion of the nomad as a model for contemporary artistic practice in the age of globalization. Whereas Bourriaud’s proposition depoliticizes the conditions of globalization that produce migrants – poverty, war, dispossession, economic deregulation — the participating artists use a range of playful, interventionist and social strategies to propose more egalitarian modes of production and consumption, and engaging with issues of labor, mobility, collectivity, and sustainability in their work. As well, this presentation will explore the notion of fibres as “already relational” owing to their social and collective histories of making, and in contrast to Bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics which elides politicized, performance and fibre art practices in particular.

Presented as part of En avril – fibre textile art au Québec

In collaboration with galerie Diagonale and the MFA Studio Art program at Concordia University

Carissa Carman’s interdisciplinary artwork includes playful site specific interventions; pseudo–purposeful yet soulful and generous. Her performances, sculptures and printed materials reference already established systems, occupations, and skills while maintaining the aesthetic of the handmade. Her collaborative practice partners with artists and professionals to negotiate the exchange of trade skills as a pioneer of do-it-yourself interpretations. Carman is a Master of Fine Arts Candidate in Fibres at Concordia University, Montreal, QC and received her BA from California State University, Chico. She has exhibited extensively and internationally in Cuba, Italy, Montreal, Miami and NYC. www.carissacarman.com

jenna dawn has led a nomadic lifestyle that has directed her interdisciplinary practice to create a diverse sense of community. Her work has ranged from an individual art practice to collaborations with children, immigrant women, military personnel, seniors, artists, designers and writers. Jenna’s art had been shown in museums, galleries, and public spaces in North America, France and West Africa. www.woventhreads.org

Suzen Green is a Newfoundland-born visual artist and educator based in Montreal, Quebec. She received her BFA (Fibres) from Alberta College of Art + Design in 2007, and her MFA (Studio Art, Fibre) from Concordia University. Her studio work includes traditional textile construction, sculpture and performance. http://suzengreen.com and www.notalazysuzen.com/

Javiera Ovalle Sazie works with different approaches to the notion of displacement of writing, performing an active way of writing in the city. Her work involves installation, photography, video, fibres and recycling. Traveling and wandering provide the surfaces on which her curiosity finds the essence of making. Ovalle completed an artist’s residency at the Darling Foundry that brought her to Montreal in 2006. She has since exhibited in the VI Biennial of the National Fine Arts Museum of Santiago, Chile, and presented her work in Boston, Barcelona, Berlin, New York, Paris, Valparaiso, Santiago de Chile, Montréal, Argentina, Brazil and Cuba. Born in Chile she completed an Associate of Arts degree in Universidad Católica de Valparaiso and then a BFA in Universidad de Playa Ancha. She lives and works in Montreal where she is completing a MFA program in Studio Arts at Concordia University. www.javieraovalle.net/

Dr. Lisa Vinebaum is an interdisciplinary artist, critical writer, curator and educator. Her art practice uses performance, video, photography, installation, and public interventions to explore identity and subjectivity — enacted in response to attempted acts of erasure — in the context of contemporary Jewish identity formations, Israeli state aggression toward Palestinians, and the war on terror. She holds a PhD in Art from Goldsmiths (University of London, UK); an MA in Textiles from Goldsmiths; and a BFA in Fibres from Concordia University in Montreal. Her creative and scholarly work have been exhibited, published and disseminated internationally across Europe, Asia and North America. She was Visiting Lecturer in Art at Goldsmiths from 2003‐2006, and is a part‐time Lecturer in the Faculty of Fine Art at Concordia University in Montreal.