re:materia exhi’pit
Early Childhood Educators of BC and Early Childhood Pedagogy Network
Curated by Tatiana Zakharova-Goodman
Open Gallery
October 26, 2024 to January 25, 2025
re:materia exhi’pit is a participatory artistic installation and exhibition space launched at the Early Childhood Educators of BC (ECEBC) Conference in May of 2024 as an invitation for early childhood educators and their allies across the province of BC to take up the difficult labour of disrupting the capitalist citizenship that supports the extractive cycle of consumption and waste production. The installation is hosted by the re:materia program, a partnership between the Early Childhood Pedagogy Network (ECPN) and ECEBC that invites early childhood educators to creatively and critically reimagine pedagogical processes and curriculum-making around waste.
Through waste artefacts, video, interactive installation, and documentation, re:materia exhi’pit offers visitors a space to rethink the familiar three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) approach, particularly in the context of early childhood, and collectively engage in refiguring waste futures.
The interactive installation includes a wall hanging featuring sketches of a young child engaged in the act of sweeping, and a curated collection of local (to Kamloops) waste. We invite the visitors to knot and stitch waste pieces into the fabric in the act of interweaving our waste present and futures.
re:materia exhi’pit was curated by Tatiana Zakharova-Goodman, atelierista and instructor at Capilano University’s School of Education and Childhood Studies, in close collaboration with the re:materia program’s scholars, pedagogists, educators, and administrators, including: Rachel Phillips, Teresa Smith, Denise Hodgins, Kathleen Kummen, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Emily Gawlick, Tracy Barkman, Tanya Makasoff, Sue Irwin, Melanie Walters, and Kerry Watts. The project was inspired, in part, by the Remida cultural project on sustainability, creativity, and research on waste materials in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
A note on colour:
In keeping with the theme of disrupting the cycle of waste and consumption, the paint used in the design of re: materia exhi’pit was re-purposed from a previous exhibition, Town + Country: Narratives of Property and Capital, which was on view July 20 to September 21, 2024, at the Kamloops Art Gallery.
