Saturday, May 30
5:45 to 6:30 pm
All ages, FREE
Please join us for an exchange of ideas expanding on the exhibition Dancing through to the other side. Kamloops Art Gallery Curator, Charo Neville, will be joined by exhibiting artists Justine A. Chambers and Luciana Freire D’Anunciação along with dance artist and curator Jenn Goodwin and Vanessa (VK) Kwan, Director + Curator, Libby Leshgold Gallery at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Together, they will discuss the rich relationship between dance and visual art and explore why embodied practices in the gallery are more imperative than ever today.
Panelist Biographies
Justine A. Chambers (1975; she/her/hers) is a bi-racial Black dance artist and educator living on the ancestral and traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm and səlilwətaɬ Nations. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with the social choreographies present in the everyday. Her most recent works are activations of the aesthetic practices of Black vernacular line dance and Black dandyism as de-colonial imaginings. Her choreography is concerned with the provisional questions: “What If?” And “Now what?” as processes towards imagining otherwise. Chambers’s work has been hosted by Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Libby Leshgold Gallery at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Western Front, Sophiensaele (Berlin), National Arts Centre, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at University of British Columbia, Tek Gallery at Simon Fraser University, Artspeak Hong Kong Performing Arts Festival, Agora de la Danse, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, and Art Museum at University of Toronto. She was the recipient of the Lola Dance Award (2017), Chrystal Dance Prize (2017 & 2023) and was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2023. She is currently an instructor at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and completing an MFA in interdisciplinary art. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
Luciana Freire D’Anunciação (she/her) is a Brazilian-Canadian dance and performance artist who develops interdisciplinary works with video, photography, visual art, theatre and poetry. With a Master in Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University, her work focuses on the themes of creative reciprocity and the interconnectedness of body, environment and community. Her work has been presented at festivals and residencies across North and South America and Europe, including Vancouver International DanceFestival, Visualeyez (Edmonton), European Performance Art Festival (Poland), Deformes Festival (Chile), and PA-F (France).
Jenn Goodwin is a Toronto/Tkaronto based dance artist, curator and programmer. Much of her art and producing practice focuses on dismantling barriers to art for both artists and publics. Her work and collaborations often explore the play, power, and politics of the body in motion, the feminization of public space, women’s presence, absence, and resilience, and the choreographic of the everyday.
She was the Curator of Public Programs at The Toronto Biennial of Art for the 2024 edition. She works with the City of Toronto Arts & Culture Department on Nuit Blanche and was central in Nuit’s move into Scarborough, and was a recipient of the RISE Community award which works to amplify voices and artistry.
Goodwin is a graduate of the Master of Curatorial Studies program at the University of Toronto, where she won an award for her exhibition all our days are full of breath. Prior to that she received a degree in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University. She is currently working on her new show The Changeover to premiere in 2027. She has written for the Journal for Curatorial Studies, the Canadian Theatre Review, ANANDAM Dancetheatre, and The Dance Current.
Vanessa (vk) Kwan is a curator and artist based on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories (Vancouver, BC). They have been in artistic leadership roles for more than 20 years, contributing to organizations such as grunt gallery, Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Access Gallery, the Powell Street Festival, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and others. They are currently Director + Curator of Galleries and Exhibitions at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Their focus is on artist-led, process-based projects, performance/ interdisciplinary presentation and residency design.
Charo Neville is Curator at the Kamloops Art Gallery. Since 2011, Neville has overseen the curatorial vision at the Gallery through over a decade of rigorous exhibitions and publications, and by strategically developing the collection. She graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Critical Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2006 and, along with independent curatorial projects, has held positions as Curatorial Assistant at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Associate Director at Catriona Jeffries Gallery, and Interim Curator/Director at Artspeak. Neville also served on the Board of Directors at the Western Front artist run centre from 2006 to 2010. Her curatorial practice supports artists who engage with the social and political potential of art. Through projects like the outdoor video projection biennale Luminocity, which Neville launched in Kamloops in 2014, she is interested in creating opportunities for public art and new media innovation that shift our relationship with urban spaces and expand access to contemporary practices. Neville has contributed to publications such as Fillip, Yishu, West Coast Line and Blackflash and participated on visual art juries, including the 2013 Sobey Art Award jury.
Photo credits:
Justine A. Chambers: Rachel Topham Photography. Luciana Freire D’Anunciação: Self-portrait.
Jenn Goodwin: Darryl Tracy.
Vanessa (vk) Kwan: Rachel Topham Photography.