Events: COVID-19 Collages and colour, Summer Solstice Celebration of Star Knowledge—Africa and Rapanui (Easter Island), and Tools for Catching Clouds (Biennale Architettura 2021)

I have three events, two of them taking place in Canada on June 9, and June 22 2021 respectively and the third takes place in Venice, Italy.

Covid19 Collage Project on June 9, 2021

A June 7, 2019 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email) included this image to illustrate Ilene Sova’s COVID collages,

Pink Ruffle Credit: Ilene Sova

Here’s more from the Colour Research Society of Canada’s (CRSC) Kaleidoscope Lecture: Covid19 Collage Project by OCAD Professor Ilene Sova event page,

In this unique colour-focused artist talk, Sova will explore her Covid19 Collage Project created in direct response to the pandemic. She will take the audience through an analysis of how she utilizes the precise symbolic and aesthetic qualities of colour-choice to reflect her psychological response to our current times and amplify the intent in her artist statement: ‘Former eyes have been replaced, and the curtain pulled back on the inequities that we didn’t fully see before. Newsfeeds are full of surreal deaths and devastating condolences. Different eyes; metallic and shiny. Eyes that no longer know how to ‘look to our future” for hope and possibilities. Our Instagram lives and our vitriolic materialism now laid bare. We are left to self-reflect, face ourselves, slow down, and toss and turn at night with vivid crackling dreams alive with messages screaming from our subconscious. We thought we were separate from nature, but now we know we are one. Sequestered in our homes, our minds begin to change, fracture with confusion. We float in a sea of unknowns, covering our faces with psychological and real masks. In a sparkly shiny isolated dreamy space; how will we prophesize our new future and manifest in a new uncertain one?

Bio: Ilene Sova holds the position of Ada Slaight Chair of Contemporary Drawing and Painting in the Faculty of Art at Ontario College of Art and Design University [OCAD University]. She identifies as Mixed Race, with a white settler, Afro-Caribbean, and Black Seminole ancestry. She is also an artist who lives with the disability of Epilepsy. As such, she passionately identifies with the tenets of intersectional feminism and has dedicated her creative career to art and activism. Ilene Sova is also the founder of the Feminist Art Collective and Blank Canvases, an in-school creative arts programme for elementary school students. She holds an Honours BFA from the University of Ottawa in Painting and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Windsor. With extensive solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, Sova’s work has most notably been shown at Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and Mutuo Centro de Arte in Barcelona. Sova’s artwork has been featured internationally in the Journal of Psychology and Counselling, the Nigerian Arts Journal, Tabula and the Italian feminist journal, Woman’O’Clock. In her academic career, Sova has been invited to speak on diversity and equity in arts curriculum at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Pratt University and the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design conference in Los Angeles. A passionate public speaker, Sova was chosen to speak at the first TEDx Women event in Toronto, and Southern University New York where she gave an all University Lecture on Art and Social Change. Additionally, Sova was invited to deliver the Arthur C. Danto Memorial Keynote Lecture at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics (ASA). Sova’s exhibitions and advocacy in education have been featured on Global Television, CBC Radio, the Toronto Star, Canada AM, The Metro, National Post, Canadian Art, and MSN News.

Register here on eventbrite

Date and time

Wed, June 9, 2021

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PDT

A Zoom link will be emailed to registered participants approximately 1 hour before the talk, and posted on our CRSC webpage.

Summer Solstice Celebration of Star Knowledge—Africa and Rapanui (Easter Island) on June 22, 2021

Ingenium’s* Indigenous Star Knowledge Symposia series was first mentioned here in a September 18, 2020 posting: Casting your eyes upon the night heavens in advance of the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox celebration, the first in the series.

With the Summer Solstice, we have the fourth and, I believe, the last in the series. From the Summer Solstice, Celebration of Star Knowledge from Africa and Rapanui (Easter Island) event page,

June 22, 2021. 3 p.m. Eastern.

Featured Speakers: Edmundo Edwards Eastman (Rapanui) and Jarita Holbrook (African culture)

Welcome from: Anita Tenasco, Kitigan Zibi, Quebec (Algonquin)

Opening Prayer: Wilfred Buck, Manitoba (Ininew)

Moderated by: Yasmin Catricheo, Chile (Mapuche)

Presentation #1: Cosmovision of the Polynesia and Rapanui. 

Featured Speaker: Edmundo Edwards Eastman. Archeoastronomy. President Fundación
Planetario Rapanui

Abstract: Some 3,500 years ago, the ancestors of the Polynesians led the speediest human expansion of the pre-historic world, guided by nothing more than their complex astronomical observations and an understanding of natural signs. This knowledge, coupled with tremendous navigational skills and human ingenuity, allowed the Polynesians to explore the vast Pacific Ocean and develop highly sophisticated cultures on thousands of different islands.  

Bio: Edmundo’s passion for archaeology started when he was 12 years old and discovered a pre-Incan site in northern Chile, yet it was after visiting Rapa Nui in 1957, that he became enthralled by Rapanui culture and returned to the island in 1960 with archaeologist William Mulloy.  Edmundo has lived and worked in Polynesia ever since. In 1977 he co-founded the Centro de Estudios de Isla de Pascua where he carried out archaeological and ethnographic studies for the University of Chile until 1985. He then left for Tahiti, conducting archaeological surveys and leading restoration work in the Society, Marquesas, and Austral Islands until he returned to Rapa Nui in 1994. Edmundo has since then devoted himself to the scientific study and preservation of the archaeology and culture of the Pacific islands.  He is the co-founder of the Pacific Islands Research Institute (PIRI) and co-owner of Archaeological Travel Service (ATS). Edmundo is an active member of the Explorers Club and in 2011 he was honored with the Lowell Thomas Award for his exceptional contribution to human knowledge through his valuable research and discoveries in Polynesia, and in 2016 he received the Citation of Merit.

Presentation #2: Celestial Africa

Featured Speaker: Jarita Holbrook

Abstract: The continent of Africa is large and has thousands of ethnic groups living in over 50 countries. Though home to some of the biggest astronomical telescopes in the world, there remains the perception that Africans have little awareness of the celestial realm. In reality, African indigenous astronomy is rich with many cultural connections to the sky as well as many practical uses of the sky. Holbrook will share some of the African legacy of rich skylore, artistic works, and practices connected to the sky.

Bio: Jarita Holbrook is a Marie Skłowdowska Curie Fellow in Science, Technology & Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Holbrook has successfully navigated the physical science and the social sciences. Upon moving to South Africa in 2013 to the Physics department at the University of the Western Cape, Holbrook was engaged in indigenous astronomy, studying the sociocultural aspects of astrophysics education in South Africa, and making a film about the social issues connected to building the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. Using interview based inquiry, Holbrook researches the practices of inclusion and exclusion through analyzing socioeconomic class, gender, and ethnicity among database-driven astrophysics collaborations. Holbrook’s current project, ASTROMOVES, explores these in the context of career decision making among astrophysicists.

Panellists:

Anita Tenasco is an Anishinabeg from Kitigan Zibi. She has a Bachelor’s degree in history and teaching from the University of Ottawa, as well as a First Nations leadership certificate from Saint Paul’s University, in Ottawa. She has also taken courses in public administration at ENAP (The University of Public Administration). In Kitigan Zibi, she has held various positions in the field of education and, since 2005, is director of education in her community.

Anita was an active participant in the Honouring Our Ancestors project, in which the Anishinabeg Nation of Kitigan Zibi, under Gilbert Whiteduck’s direction, was successful in the restitution of the remains of ancestors conserved at the Canadian Museum of History, in Gatineau. Anita also participated in the organizing of a conference on repatriation, in Kitigan Zibi, in 2005. She plays an important role in this research project.

http://nikanishk.ca/en/blog/project-participants/anita-tenasco-2/

Wilfred Buck is a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. He obtained his B.Ed. & Post Bacc. from the University of Manitoba.

As an educator Wilfred has had the opportunity and good fortune to travel to South and Central America as well as Europe and met, shared and listened to Indigenous people from all over the world.

He is a husband, father of four, son, uncle, brother, nephew, story-teller, mad scientist, teacher, singer, pipe-carrier, sweat lodge keeper, old person and sun dance leader. Researching Ininew star stories Wilfred found a host of information which had to be interpreted and analyzed to identify if the stories were referring to the stars. The journey began… The easiest way to go about doing this, he was told, was to look up. 

“The greatest teaching that was ever given to me, other than my wife and children, is the ability to see the humor in the world”…Wilfred Buck

https://acakwuskwun.com/

Yasmin Catricheo is the STEM Education Scholar at AUI’s Office of Education and Public Engagement. She is a physics educator from Chile, and of Mapuche origin. Yasmin is passionate about the teaching of science and more recently has focused in the area of astronomy and STEM. In her professional training she has taken a range of courses in science and science education, and researched the benefits of scientific argumentation in the physics classroom, earning a master’s degree in education from the University of Bío-Bío. Yasmín is also a member of the indigenous group “Mapu Trafun”, and she works closely with the Mapuche community to recover the culture and communicate the message of the Mapuche Worldview. In 2018 Yasmín was selected as the Chilean representative for Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassador Program (ACEAP) founded by NSF.

Associated Universities Inc.

Register for the Webinar

Note: You can also find the information on Ingenium’s French language event page: Solstice d’été : une célébration des connaissances stellaires de l’Afrique et de Rapa Nui (l’île de Pâques).

*Ingenium is the name for Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, which acts as an umbrella organization for the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, and the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

Tools for Catching Clouds at Venice’s Biennale Architettura 2021

This information comes from a June 8, 2021 email received from the artist himself, Lanfranco Aceti,

Tools for Catching Clouds is a new series of works of art by Lanfranco Aceti. They are a segment of Preferring Sinking to Surrender — the artist’s installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021. The installation is comprised of drawings, sculptures, paintings, videos, performances, and a vegetable garden. 

Curated by Alessandro Melis for the Italian Pavilion, Preferring Sinking to Surrender is a progression and accumulation of works of art that will be developed throughout the duration of the Venice Architecture Biennale, from May 21, 2021, to November 21, 2021. 

The artist reimagines the future in matriarchal terms and bypasses social upheavals and legacies of environmental disasters through a series of aesthetic approaches that navigate melancholia, anger, and hope. The works of art retrace the legacies of the past — back to the Italic tribes that populated the Apennines before the founding of Rome and the arrival of Greeks in southern Italy.  

The worship of the Magna Mater — or the Great Black Mediterranean Mother — by the Italic tribes is a necessary rediscovery to understand the resilience of matriarchy and its values of acceptance and inclusion within societies that have become patriarchal in nature and, de facto, hierarchical and exclusionary. Nevertheless, these values resist and persist, and have empowered entire generations who were considered ‘outsiders’ and who have found, in the embrace of the ‘Mamma Schiavona’ (another name for the Magna Mater), their strength, networks of solidarity, and empowerment. 

Aceti’s research in gender issues and alternative structures to patriarchy, developed during a one year affiliation at Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) @ MIT, inspired a continued analysis of pre-Roman matriarchal societies. This led to the conception of Preferring Sinking to Surrender as an alternative space and narrative to current capitalistic cultural frameworks. 

“I have to say that it is a pleasure working with Alessandro Melis,” said Aceti. “Not every curator is fond of process based art. For me it is particularly rewarding to have found a curator that is both empowering and supportive.” 

For more information and images of Tools for Catching Clouds, click here

About the Artist

Lanfranco Aceti is known for his extensive career as artist, curator, and academic. He has exhibited numerous personal projects including Car Park, a public performance in the UK at the John Hansard Gallery; Who The People?, an installation artwork acquired in its entirety by the Chetham’s Library and Museum in Manchester; Sowing and Reaping, installation artworks acquired in their entirety by the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Cyprus; Hope Coming On, a site-specific choral performance he designed for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and realized in front of Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On); Shimmer, a series of sculptural, photographic, and painting works curated by Irini Papadimitriou (V&A) at the Tobazi Mansion in Hydra; a large choral performance titled Accursed for the Thessaloniki Biennial in Greece; and Knock, Knock, Knocking a public space installation in the Mediterranean Garden Pavilion of the New Sea Waterfront of Thessaloniki. Currently, he is developing a large international project, Preferring Sinking to Surrender for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, which includes performances in major cities around the world. 

About The Studium

The Studium is Lanfranco Aceti’s artistic studio. It has partnered with public and private organizations as well as with individuals to realize the artist’s works and to develop fora for the discussion of aesthetic approaches to public space, the role of contemporary art in the social political landscape, and themes of social and environmental justice.

For questions or information and materials, please contact The Studium’s Marketing Director, John Francescutti.

The Venice Architecture Biennale (or Biennale Architettura 2021), from May 21, 2021, to November 21, 2021.

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