“Daughter, I made these works for you, my future ancestor. I created this document, these pieces, thisMichif self-archive for you. So you wouldn’t have to search my name, dig deep for my stories…”  

Inspired by her grandpa’s hunting shack and her daughter’s ancestral home lands, Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher reaches for the space between worlds in her solo exhibition, a memory of you: of holding, of carrying together. In this exhibition she extrapolates, expands and focuses in on beaded works and structures as a way of building forward with new archives of work, mindful of the gaps and omissions that she would like to not be repeated when passing her lineage to her own daughter. Running counter to a long history of assigned anonymity to Michif women in the archive, she is using the space of this exhibition to reclaim agency and position her beading practice as resistance to the erosion of cultural memory.

Maria-Margaretta is an interdisciplinary Red River Michif artist from Treaty Six Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She has ancestral ties to the Métis communities of St-François-Xavier, St. Boniface, Manitoba and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She is currently making and living on the stolen territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations. Maria-Margaretta holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art+Design and an MFA from OCAD University. Her practice is an exploration of the Michif self archive, autobiographical beadwork and objects of the everyday. Using Métis identity as a place of transformation she questions how memory, personal experience, motherhood, and ancestral relations influence her understanding of self.

Photo by Dennis Ha.

Digitized Programming

Publication catalogue:

Designed by Vicky Lum and printed by Moniker Press, free, physical copies of the catalogue are available in the gallery while supplies last.

A PDF version with images is available to explore here.

An Alternative-Text version is available to explore: Plain text, Audio.

Creative Access Audio Tour:

Soundcloud: streaming audio

creative-access-audio-transcript-plainText-aMemory

Floor Plan:

A 02-memory-floorplan from the exhibition. A tactile map was created and has been archived at grunt gallery. Information about the tactile map is available within the Creative Access Audio Tour and was used as a reference tool for self-guided movement through the show. Contact archives@grunt.ca to learn more about the tactile map.

Virtual Walkthrough:

Mercedes Eng is a Chinese mixee settler with familial connections to “Vancouver’s” Chinatown that are 100 years deep. She is an artist, poet, prison abolitionist, and a professor at Emily Carr University, where she organizes the On Edge reading series. Mercedes’ writing and art is shaped by lived experience, grounded in community organizing and volunteering, and in service to social and environmental justice. It has been her years-long dream to exhibit her father’s prison artwork as an act of loving care.

Digitized Programming:

Publication catalogue:

Designed by Vicky Lum and printed by Moniker Press, free, physical copies of the catalogue are available in the gallery while supplies last.

A PDF version with images is available to explore here.
An Alternative-Text version is available to explore: Plain text, Audio.

Artist Talk:

Site Map and Didactics:

A PDF containing the didactic information and layout of the salon installations of the archive images and brass works in the show. This didactic information is also contained within the audio tour and virtual walkthroughs.

Virtual Walkthrough:

“Sora, you need to give birth to a daughter.”

Inundated by the idea that prosperity and success will come to her once she gives birth to a daughter, Sora Park’s exhibition Daughter, Daughter, Daughter at grunt gallery reflects Korean diasporic experiences through the exploration of Saju, Korea’s ancient form of divination and fortune-telling practice that predicts one’s fate based on the date and time of their birth.

Travelling between the past, present, and future, Park invites the visitors to the gallery space trapped inside a red square on her Saju chart that links her destiny to motherhood. As a happily child-free person, Park delves into how her childhood spent in Korea and her upbringing in a Korean-Canadian household where childbearing is considered a norm collide with her own interpretation of motherhood. 

Daughter, Daughter, Daughter depicts a playful perception of a fortune-telling practice and its claim that the future can seriously be predicted while revealing a tiny fraction of trust and belief in the practice that lures so many people into being participants. By applying aesthetics within Saju to her colourful and immersive installation, the exhibition at grunt gallery explores the relationship between people’s belief in the occult and the role that gender plays in predicting one’s fate.

Sora Park gratefully acknowledges the support from the Canada Council for the Arts for this exhibition. 

Sora Park (She/Her) is a Korean-Canadian interdisciplinary artist living on the traditional territories of the q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), Máthxwi (Matsqui) and Se’mya’me’ (Semiahmoo) First Nations. She received her BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and received her MA in Fine Arts from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway. In her art practice, she is currently interested in exploring the space between clarity and confusion brought on by diasporic experiences.

Image courtesy of the artist.
This exhibition is curated by Whess Harman.

Digitized Programming:

Publication catalogue:

PDF
A companion catalogue for the exhibition with curatorial text by Whess Harmon, and exhibition response by Areum Kim.
Visual description available: Plain Text, Audio.
A free printed copy is available in gallery while supplies last.

Artist Talk:

Summary: Recording of the artist Sora Park in conversation with local artist Romi Kim from January 11th, 2024. Video has English captions.

Creative Access Audio Tour:

Creative Access Audio Tour of the exhibition. Link opens on SoundCloud (external link).
Listen to a visually described tour of Daughter, Daughter, Daughter, written by Sora Park with support from Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa and Kay Slater, and narrated by Kay Slater.
Transcript available: Google Doc, Plain Text, PDF

Site map:

A PDF containing art work titles and materials. This information is also available within the creative access audio tour.

Virtual Walkthrough:

We captured a 360 of the exhibition, but only have the rights to share 5 active shows at a time. Here are stills that were pulled from the 360. If you would like to experience our 360 capture, please contact archives@grunt.ca

The video is a silent pan of the exhibition viewing the show from the south, and then a fly up and over as the camera repositions to a north view of the exhibition.

Syncretic Birthrights brings together a series of both new and previous work from painter and illustrator Odera Igbokwe. Central to Igbokwe’s work is the idea of possibility and transformation, especially for QTBIPOC communities. These works are part of a continuing collection that blend together Nigerian and afro-diasporic folklore and traditions, reclaiming and recontextualizing them into a series of syncretized paintings reflecting the many ways culture becomes harmonized within one’s identity while still responding to communal needs of storytelling and connection within art. Their paintings celebrate sexuality and gender variance in the face of postcolonial homophobia through vibrant colours, and mythological figures presented with striking grace and speaking towards an unwavering spirit of Black resilience, joy and magic.

Odera Igbokwe (they/them) is an illustrator and painter located on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Odera was born of Igbo parents who immigrated to the lands of the Lenape people. As a result they are constantly excavating, responding, and envisioning in spite of the fractures that occur via diaspora. Their artwork is an exploration of storytelling through Afro-diasporic spiritualism, Black resilience, magical girl transformation sequences, and redefining the archetypal hero’s journey. More specifically, they are intrigued by Nigerian spiritualism, folklore, and sacred practices, and how that relates to contemporary communities across the Americas.

Their artwork weaves together ancient narratives with Afrofuturist visions to explore present day embodiment. It explores the magic of the Black Queer imagination, and questions how to build a home from an intersectional lens. Ultimately these works are a gateway to healing from collective and generational traumas, and assert that healing can be a celebration of joy, mundanity, pain, and fantasy coexisting. As an artist, Odera works with clients and galleries to create work that is deeply personal, soulful, and intersectional. They have created personal works and commissions for Beyoncé, Solange Knowles, Oumou Sangaré, and Dawn Richard. Odera’s work has been exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, grunt gallery, Burrard Arts Foundation, The James Black Gallery and SUM Gallery.

Image: The Volcano by Odera Igbokwe. Courtesy of the artist.

This exhibition is curated by Whess Harman.

Digitized Programming:

Publication catalogue:

PDF
A companion catalogue for the exhibition with curatorial text by Whess Harmon, and exhibition response by Nya Lewis.
Visual description available: Plain Text, Audio.
A free printed copy is available in gallery while supplies last.

Artist Talk:

Odera Igbokwe’s artist talk. Link opens on vimeo with English captions and transcript via google docs.
Summary: Artist talk with Odera at the opening of their solo exhibition on May 12th, 2023.

Creative Access Audio Tour:

Creative Access Audio Tour of the exhibition. Link opens on SoundCloud (external link).
Listen to a visually described tour of Syncretic Birthrights, written by Kay Slater and Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa, and Christina Kim. It is narrated by Kay Slater.
English transcript available: Google Doc, Plain Text, PDF

Site Map and Didactics:

A PDF containing the didactic information and layout of the works in the show. This didactic information is also contained within the audio tour and virtual walkthroughs.

Virtual Walkthrough:

We captured a 360 of the exhibition, but only have the rights to share 5 active shows at a time. Here are stills that were pulled from the 360. If you would like to experience our 360 capture, please contact archives@grunt.ca

In the exhibition Ladykiller the Maneater, Tlingit artist Alison Bremner brings forward the experiences of an imagined deity who has existed in a dream-state for a very long time—so long that no one is certain even of what she was the deity of anymore. The eel in Tlingit culture was considered too “lowly” a creature to eat and therefore largely ignored. But eventually, Ladykiller could not ignore the world of men, and was awoken from her subterranean slumber and emerged to traverse and experience this new world around her.

For Bremner, culture is not stagnant. Through contact and technological revolution, Tlingit culture is constantly adapting, observing and searching for its place in the world, just as any other. Ladykiller the Maneater is both a manifestation of trauma and a means of processing it; Bremner envisions her as loving and gentle in her most natural state but highly carnivorous when agitated. Bremner’s paintings demonstrate both the love and bite of the artist’s humour and her penchant to draw from all aspects of contemporary Indigenous identity without assigning much attention to the discourse of traditional vs contemporary. Bremner’s work is not exotic but lived in, felt and able to weave through the cacophony of abrupt awakenings and disruption.

Alison O. Bremner is a Tlingit artist born and raised in Southeast Alaska. Bremner is believed to be the first Tlingit woman to carve and raise a totem pole. She has studied under master artists David R. Boxley and David A. Boxley in Kingston, Washington. Painting, woodcarving, regalia and digital collage are a few of the mediums the artist employs. In addition to her contemporary art practice, Bremner is committed to the revitalization of the Tlingit language and creating works for traditional and ceremonial use.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of, among others, the Burke Museum, Seattle; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Château Musée Boulogne-sur-Mer, France; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and the British Museum in London.

Image: Courtesy of the artist.

This exhibition is curated by Whess Harman.

Digitized Programming:

Publication catalogue:

PDF
A companion catalogue for the exhibition with curatorial text by Whess Harmon.
Visual description available: Plain Text, Audio.
A free printed copy is available in gallery while supplies last.

Artist Talk:

Alison Bremner’s artist talk. Link opens on vimeo with English captions and transcript via google docs.
Summary: Artist talk with Alison on April 19th, 2023, recorded on Zoom.

Creative Access Audio Tour:

Creative Access Audio Tour of the exhibition. Audio currently unavailable.
A visually described tour of Ladykiller the Maneater, written by Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa, with assistance from Kay Slater.
English transcript available: Google Doc, Plain Text, PDF

Site Map and Didactics:

A PDF containing the didactic information and layout of the works in the show. This didactic information is also contained within the audio tour and virtual walkthroughs.

Virtual Walkthrough:

We captured a 360 of the exhibition, but only have the rights to share 5 active shows at a time. Here are stills that were pulled from the 360. If you would like to experience our 360 capture, please contact archives@grunt.ca

As three Generation X storytellers with a shared affinity for queer reclamation strategies and decorative craft traditions, Daniel Barrow, Glenn Gear and Paige Gratland began collaborating in the summer of 2018 at the Intergenerational LGBT Residency at Gibraltar Point, Toronto Island. Expanding this connection, the artists came together at Eastern Edge in St John’s this past summer, where they engaged local community as a queer craft circle, exploring a skillsharing approach to creative exchange.

In a third iteration of their collaborative relationship, Barrow, Gear and Gratland will spend two weeks in the grunt space in advance of the exhibition opening, sharing practices and bringing together their work for Three Way Mirror. Shaped by the upheavals and isolation of the last 3 years, the artists will explore in situ the intimacy created when people work creatively together. It is a multi-faceted curiosity: the material intelligence of paper cutting, leather-work, weaving and beading–born in each of their practices through years of learning, intergenerational exchange and queer support networks–intersects with time-based storytelling, animation and documentary film. Woven throughout is a conversation with each other and the wider community, and Three Way Mirror finds in their shared sensibilities (and distinct practices) a space for queer craft legacies to be created, shared and have their stories told.

This exhibition is curated by Whess Harman.

Daniel Barrow is a genderfluid, Montreal-based storyteller/artist who has employed parallel strategies in their approach to the tradition of paper dolls – inventing “narrative architectures” that grapple with the dollhouse/paper doll as an instrument of conventional heteronormative, gender binary instruction. Barrow’s queer miniatures can initially seem romantic, borderline-nostalgic and functionally somewhat straight-forward. Part of their working method, however, involves introducing narrative and pictorial elements to the domestic miniature object – transforming it into a sculptural ode to the decorative, the transfeminine, the beautiful, the miniaturized and the minor.

Glenn Gear is an interdisciplinary artist of Inuit and settler ancestry, born in Corner Brook Newfoundland and with ancestral ties to the homeland of Nunatsiavut, Northern Labrador. Gear has been working in hand-beaded objects and small shadow boxes, combining Inuit material practice with his own intimate processes and approaches, which convey latent queer realities in traditional patterns. Working in beadwork and sealskin, Gear has begun incorporating satin, lace, sequins and other signifiers of queer culture to embrace personal and cultural connections between land, people, and animals through research-based creation. His handcrafted beadwork and animated films incorporate layers of meaning derived from materials, collage, and craft techniques, seen through an Indigiqueer lens.

Paige Gratland is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work is informed by social history and design, producing projects and objects that explore craft practices, intergenerational exchange and colour narratives. She learned to weave in 2019 at the Richmond Weavers and Spinners Guild (British Columbia) and is currently enrolled in the Master Weaver Program at Olds College (Alberta).

Digitized Programming:

Creative Access Audio Tour:

Creative Access Audio Tour of the exhibition. Audio currently unavailable.
Listen to a visually described tour of Three Way Mirror, written By Kay Slater and Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa, narrated by Kay Slater.
English transcript available: Google Doc

Virtual Walkthrough:

In 2022, we provided our visitors with the opportunity to walkthrough this exhibition via a 360° experience. While no longer available or interactive, this is a short video of the experience so visual audiences can experience the layout of the space.

Image: Rose Garden Poem (detail) by Daniel Barrow, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.