Closing Event and Performance: Pedestrian Protest

Join artists Evann Siebens and Keith Doyle, along with local collaborators, to celebrate the closing of the installation Pedestrian Protest at Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite.

We invite the public to gather safely outdoors for this special event, which will include a land acknowledgement and blessing from Kat Norris and Stacy Gallagher and a performance by Immigrant Lessons.

Offsite is located at 1100 West Georgia Street, between Thurlow and Bute Streets, just west of the Shangri–La Hotel. Directions »

Find out more about Pedestrian Protest here »

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Evann Siebens’ lens-based practice explores the human body as an archival site and the politics of the female gaze. She danced with the National Ballet of Canada and the Bonn Ballett in Germany before studying film production at New York University. Recent exhibitions and screenings include the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 2021; Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With), Rotterdam, 2020; Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver, 2019; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2018; and Burrard Arts Foundation (Façade Fest), Vancouver, 2017. Siebens’ films have recently screened at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and Light Moves Festival of Screendance in Limerick, Ireland, where she was awarded the Prize for Outstanding Overall Work. Her work at A Performance Affair in Brussels was featured on the front page of the New York Times International Edition in 2019. She will be presenting work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 2021. Siebens is currently based in Vancouver and represented by Wil Aballe Art Projects.

Keith Doyle is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media and the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD), Vancouver. He holds both a BFA and an MFA in Sculpture and maintains an active material practice. As a post-secondary educator, Doyle focuses on product, craft and industrial design. He is a founding faculty member and current Co-director of Material Matters, a faculty-led and student-driven material research centre at ECUAD where research-creation activities and design-led research partnerships are enabled by funding from the National Research Council Canada and the Canadian Councils for research (CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC). Doyle presents, promotes and exhibits nationally and abroad on his collaborative research activities and material practice. Recent exhibitions include Wil Aballe Art Projects and the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, University of British Colmbia, Vancouver, 2017, and Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2018. He was a Resident Artist of the ACME International Residencies Programme, London, UK; a Banff New Media Institute alum (2006, 2007); and a former Artist’s Research Medialab fellow at Dance Theater Workshop, New York. 

Kat Norris is Coast Salish from the Lyackson First Nation. Her traditional name, Zucomul’wat, is from her Musqueam great, great, great grandmother. Kat is a survivor thriver of the Kuper Island Residential School and is on her healing journey. Her formative years were spent in Los Angeles, California. After moving back at 19, Norris joined the American Indian Movement, where she learned of the depth of the genocide that her people experienced. Eventually she formed the Indigenous Action Movement and has organized against media bias, police brutality (for example, the death of Frank Paul) and ambulance neglect (for example, the death of Curtis Brick). Now, Norris is a cultural educator, doing contract work in Lower Mainland elementary and high school and at universities. She is a grandmother and finds taking care of sharing knowledge with the next generation to be a form of activism. She is still learning the importance of her role in this capacity.

Stacy Gallagher was born on these unceded Coast Salish territories. He follows the matriarchal grandmothers of Serpent River, Ontario, where his mother was born. As a good relative, he has to behave according to the grandmothers’ teachings and natural laws. He has been given the great responsibility to care for the people, meaning his life is no longer his, but he follows the original instructions through the blood memory of his ancestors. He serves the people as a firekeeper and as a land and water protector.

Established in 2016, Immigrant Lessons is a Vancouver- based, international multidisciplinary art collective. Immigrant Lessons shifts and morphs, honouring change and transition, investigation and rebellion. Immigrant Lessons exists in multiplicity as an arthouse, a research/creation Lab, a youth-artist incubator and interdisciplinary performance troupe, which utilizes and explores the mediums of: dance/movement, theatre, film, photography, spoken word, creative writing, music, fashion, visual media, and visual design. This collective creates, plays and is currently based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. As underground artists and street dancers, the collective would also like to express deep love and gratitude for the innovations of Black and Latinx people and Black culture. The collective is directed and founded by Queer Black multidisciplinary artist, Kevin Fraser. Its core artistic associates include: Sophia Gamboa, Sevrin Emnacen-Boyd, Simran Sachar, Joshua Cameron, Tegvaran Singh and Hayden Pereira. In addition to its core members, Immigrant Lessons regularly brings in guest mentors, collaborators and interpreters for its umbrella of work, research, exploration and collaborations. With a shared love of movement and art, Immigrant Lessons incorporates their extensive street dance/underground arts background, experimental practice, contemporary ideology, multidisciplinary skill set and the investigation of societal norms and intersections to give voice and visibility to marginalized and oppressed communities/individuals. Immigrant Lessons aims to heal, inspire, excite, inform, motivate and uplift.