Moccasin vamps by by Elena Abel, Photo via Walking With Our Sisters

More than 1,180 Indigenous women and girls were reported murdered or missing in the past three decades. Walking With Our Sisters pays homage to these lives lost with a commemorative art project, featuring over 1,700 pairs of moccasin vamps (tops)and over 100 pairs of children’s vamps.

Community members created and donated each of the vamps, to honour each individual life lost. “They are sisters, mothers, aunties, daughters, cousins, grandmothers, wives and partners. They have been cared for, they have been loved, they are missing and they are not forgotten,” writes Walking With Our Sisters.

David Dahms sits down with Catherine Martin, the Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, and Michelle Graveline, a Halifax Regional School Board Aboriginal Student Support Worker, both of whom are key players in the touring exhibition’s stop at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (January 14-February 1). They discuss the impact of these lives lost on communities, the lack of justice for many of these victims and why it’s about time Canadians start taking the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women more seriously.

Moccasin vamps by Dolly Assinewe. Image via Walking With Our Sisters

Moccasin vamps by Sharon Angeconeb. Image via Walking With Our Sisters

Chris Myhr, installation view of Approaches to Erg, 2014. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Chris Myhr is captivated by the destructive power of water. In this Visual Arts News podcast, Veronica Simmonds chats with the Ontario-based artist  about his exploration of the Halifax Harbour and the ships wrecked beneath its surface. For Myhr’s Approaches to Erg—part of a larger body work, Point Line Intersection: In and Around Urban Waters—Myhr recorded the haunting deep-water sounds lurking just above these wrecks. Myhr’s multi-speaker audio installation is immersing viewers in the disorienting world of underwater sounds at the Khyber Centre for the Arts  (May 20-29, 2014).

Photo of Chris Myhr recording by Sandy Saunders

Installation detail of Chris Myhr’s Approaches to Erg, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist.

Artist Annie Macmillan takes the public swimming at Halifax’s “Little Lakes” during her Fieldwork residency. Photo: Katie McKay

This summer as part of the Fieldwork residency project—a series of residencies in the HRM this summer for artists who “employ research methodologies and fieldwork practices generally associated with the natural and social sciences”—artist Annie Macmillan is seeking out every lake in the Halifax Regional Municipality with the name “Little Lake” and swimming its perimeter. Her plan is to turn those maps into drawings that tell the story of each swim. In this interview for Visual Arts News, Veronica Simmonds catches up with her to talk about her underwater adventures, her artistic process and her exploration of a city’s edges.

Join Macmillan as she leads her next public swim, Wednesday August 7.

Photos by Katie McKay
Podcast Music:

Apparat- Sayulita
Air- Alone in Kyoto
Yann Tiersen – Till the End