history

Listening to Silence

"What Carries Us" at The Rooms

What does it mean to revisit the stories we’ve been told, the stories that purport to tell us who we are? And why might we do so in the first place? This is the premise that underpins What Carries Us: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Black Atlantic, an exhibition curated by Toronto-based artist, curator, and...

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How to Commemorate an Absence

In Nova Scotia and elsewhere people are grappling with the issue of what to do with monuments associated with a painful past, and are asking whether the action of tearing down statues like that of Edward Cornwallis in Halifax helps to redress a history of violence, or whether the removal simply hides or disguises what has happened. In thinking through the dilemma posed by this question, we are forced to consider when it is appropriate to remove a monument, what should happen to it when it is taken down, and what to do with the space left behind.

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Redessiner les marges

Mario Doucette et l’identité acadienne vue de l’extérieur

Nous avons seulement eu une perspective de notre histoire, c’est la perspective des British. Les livres d’histoire ont été écrits d’après leurs témoignages.

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Redrawing the Margins

Mario Doucette + the Acadians as outsiders

"In my paintings I highlight heroes that people should know who we don’t learn about in school. We didn’t know that there was an Acadian resistance."

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Q + A: Jordan Bennett

Mi’kmaq artist bringing traditional Beothuk and Mi’kmaq art into contemporary discourse

Visual Arts News was excited to feature the work of artist Jordan Bennett in our Fall 2015 issue. In this online installation of her interview series, Current Conditions & Forecasts, Eryn Foster chats with Bennett about everything ranging from his experiences representing Newfoundland in Venice to his work bringing traditional Indigenous art forms into contemporary art discourse. ERYN FOSTER: You...

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Retracing the past

A conversation with Cathy Busby

Cathy Busby displays the artworks that the Confederation Centre Art Gallery’s first director, Moncrieff Williamson, acquired half a century ago on a shoestring budget ahead of a royal visit from the Queen. Or at least, what was left of them.

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A measure of disorder: Seripop’s exploration of entropy

Though some mark 50th anniversaries with gold, Séripop’s The Face Stayed East, the Mouth Went West marks the 50th anniversary of Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre by opening with more striking elements. Interested in exploring entropy in bright colours and on a grand scale, Séripop—who are Montreal-based duo Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau—inject a measure of disorder into the...

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