WED AUG 3RD | WE RETURN: OPENING CELEBRATION

St’ít’eweḵw’| Stanley Park, Second Beach

8701 Stanley Park Dr, Vancouver, BC V6G 3E2 (Google Maps pin here!)

6 PM

With ASL Interpretation by Season Hunt and Vanessa Coley-Donohue

Year after year, like the returning dandelions and cherry blossoms, we come back to the work we weave together. Join us in celebrating our 8th year of Vines Art Festival, witness these living stories and resounding songs turned flesh.

Senaqwila

Senaqwila Wyss is from the Squamish Nation, Tsimshian, Sto:lo Hawaiian and Swiss. She is completing her Bachelors in Communications and First Nations studies at SFU. She is an ethnobotanist and warrior entrepreneur. She co-owns Raven and Hummingbird Tea Co. With mother T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss using Indigenous plant teachings to share with people of all ages. She is also sharing her knowledge to the next generation with daughter Kamaya. Senaqwila facilitates indigenous plant knowledge workshops and has experience in professional communications and coordination and event planning.

Mabel Nahanee and Skweltapis

Coming Soon

Manuel Axel Strain

Manuel Axel Strain is a non-binary 2-Spirit artist with Musqueam/Simpcw/Inkumupulux ancestry, based in stolen, sacred and ancestral homelands and waters of the Katzie/Kwantlen peoples. Although they have attended Emily Carr University of Art + Design they prioritize Indigenous epistemologies through the embodied knowledge of their mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and ancestors. Creating artwork in dialogue, collaboration, and reference with their kin/relatives, their lived experience becomes a source of agency that resonates through their work with performance, space, painting, sculpture, photography, video, sound and installation. Their artworks display a strong autobiographical brace, tackling such subjects as ancestral and community ties, Indigeneity, labour, resource extraction, gender, Indigenous medicine, and land. Their work has been seen in the Capture Photography Festival, the Richmond Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, and other places across Turtle Island. Recent works confront and undermine realities and imaginaries of colonialism to offer a space that exists beyond that matrix of power.

Tzo’kam

Tzo’kam means “chickadee” and “visitors are coming” in the Stl’atl’imx language. Flora Wallace and her family have sung together at family occasions and community events for more than 50 years. After elder Flora Wallace participated in the Aboriginal Women’s Voices gathering (1997) at Banff, Alberta, the family decided to expand their efforts to share the culture. It did not take long for Tzo’kam to hit the stage and start recording. The first major concert by Tzo’kam was at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in the summer of 1997 opening a stage that featured Buffy Saint Marie and Keith Secola.

Tzo’kam recorded for the Smithsonian Institution, for Silverwave Records and released three CD’s on their own. Since 1997 Tzo’kam has performed at many festivals and concerts including Folklife in Washington D.C., Full Circle Concert in Calgary, Alberta, Harrison Arts Festival in Harrison Hot Springs, B.C., Harmony Arts Festival in West Vancouver, B.C., and many conferences and gatherings. Tzo’kam, under the direction of Russell Wallace, continues to work within the Aboriginal communities and educational communities to teach, share and maintain a tradition that has been kept alive by dedicated elders.

Kin Balam, Kinfolk Nation, Hampton

Coming Soon

Randall Bear Barnetson | Skwell Sdzi – Sunshine for the heart

This piece was created in appreciation of the life givers near. For they have the ability to create and give life to those around them; to be “Skwell Szdi” – Sunshine to one’s heart. The teachings of my Elders have always emphasized respecting and uplifting women in our communities and especially in leadership. Women have inherent strength, resilience, and wisdom. For these reasons and more our Indigenous communities on the Northwest Coast are matrilineal and appointed traditional leadership to women. So we raise our hands in honour to those who exemplify these traits and bring life and light to our families and communities.

Seema Mehra | Inclusive : Language Banners 

Seema’s interactive installations involves the participants in the creation of the artwork, offering the possibility of free expression and social connection within the public domain. She  invites people to use dyes to write on fabric in  figurative speech that is specific to their mother tongue.

This act of writing and sharing is a tangible performative human experience that has touch, movement, voice, and facial expressions empowering the writer and reader who translates for a particular collective. In this sharing of the  spoken and written language, one shares its unique graphics, aural perception and oral histories tethered to its culture.

This community endeavour began in 2008 a as part of the Local Car free festival events, its an ongoing project that will be part of the Vine Art festival platform in August of 2022.