The annual Emily Award Program recognizes the outstanding achievements by members of the alumni community whose creative pursuits in the arts, media and design have brought honour to the University.

Tsēma Igharas (formerly Tamara Skubovius) is an interdisciplinary artist and a member of the Tahltan First Nation. She uses Potlatch methodology to create conceptual artwork influenced by her mentorship in Northwest Coast Formline Design at K’saan (2005/06), her studies in visual culture and time in the mountains. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2011) and graduated from the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program at OCADu showing her thesis work, LAND|MINE that connects materials to mine sites and bodies to the land. Tsēma has shown and performed in various places in Canada, and internationally in Chiapas, Mexico; Asheville, USA; and Santiago, Chile.

Each year the Honorary Doctorate Degree Program celebrates and recognizes the commitment, dedication, and service of individuals who are distinguished by their significant contributions and sustained creative and philanthropic achievements in their areas of expertise.

Rebecca Belmore studied at Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) from 1984–1986. Belmore is a multi-disciplinary artist whose works evoke the connections between bodies, land, and language and are firmly rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities. Since 1987, Belmore has exhibited her work at national and international venues. Her solo shows include: Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2008);The Named and the Unnamed, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (2002); and Fountain (2005) at the 51st Venice Biennale.

Her group exhibitions include: Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, Niigata Prefecture, Japan (2015); Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Art Museum, New York (2007); Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON (1992); and Creation or Death: We will Win, Havana Biennial, Cuba (1991).

Belmore was a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2013, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2009, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2005.

Capture Photography Festival Participation
Reflection Series
Apr 14 – May 12, 2018
Gam Gallery
110 E Hastings St (at Columbia)
Vancouver

Lacie Burning is an emerging Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Onondaga (patrilineal) artist and curator raised on Six Nations of the Grand River located in southern Ontario. They are a multidisciplinary artist who works in photography, performance, installation, print, and sculpture. Burning is currently studying in the Visual Fine Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver. Having come from a culturally and politically grounded upbringing, their work focuses on politics of Indigeneity and identity from a Haudenosaunee perspective. More recently their practice has revolved around questions of Indigenous resistances, land issues, and haunting.

Burning’s work has been shown extensively in Vancouver and Ontario. In 2016, they were invited to participate in the Mush Hole Project at the Mohawk Institute, a former residential school that their family attended. Burning co-curated, along with scholar June Scudeler, Unsettling Colonial Gender Boundaries for the 2017 Queer Arts Festival. This exhibition commissioned new media works by Thirza Cuthand and Chandra Melting Tallow and also included past work by Kent Monkman and Raven Davis. They have also hosted QAF’s Art Salon, talking about the themes of Adrian Stimson’s UnSettled exhibition with Stimson and artists George Littlechild and Dayna Danger. Their 2012 work Story Time was critically acclaimed by Canadian Art in 2013 for their participation in NE:ETH: Going Out of the Darkness.

Burning currently sits on the executive board of directors for Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival (VIMAF) as Secretary and also sits on the programming committee. They have worked extensively with youth, including with Urban Native Youth Association as a program assistant and youth leader for Overly Creative Minds as well as a volunteer with Child & Family Services as a primary prevention assistant in Ohsweken, Ontario.

Third year Visual Arts painting major Levi Nelson’s quadriptych, Biology, has won the 9th annual IDEA Art Award and a $5,000 cash prize.

Founded in 2009, the IDEA Art Award is open to current Emily Carr students and alumni who have graduated within the last three calendar years and places the winning pieces in different areas of Vancouver General Hospital or UBC Hospital as part of that facility’s permanent collection.

Nelson received an Honourable Mention in last year’s IDEA Art Award competition, placing second overall. After hearing back from the jury, Nelson was determined to win the following year. And win he did.

“We are thrilled to have this work in our collection,” says Jim O’Hara, IDEA Art Award Juror and Vice President of Leadership Giving at the VGH + UBC Hospital Foundation.

Hailing from the Lil’wat Nation, Nelson fuses the contemporary with traditional North West Coast art to magnificent effect. Created with oil paint, Biology is a true representation of art that keeps on giving. It is impossible not to be taken by the vibrant colours and bold movement in the piece, the playful but deliberate use of line and shape. It is an immersive experience. Nelson’s work will grace the Surgical Day Care Waiting Room in the Koerner Pavilion at UBC Hospital and will infuse the space with dynamism. His aim was to “create a painting that a person could really lose themselves in. A work of art that doesn’t reveal itself completely, but at each glance offers something new to be discovered…built on awe, contemplation, meditation, and getting lost in one’s thoughts until the Doctor calls your name.”

Congratulations to Levi Nelson for this fantastic achievement. Biology is sure to lift the spirits and captivate the imaginations of patients for years to come.

Luna’s Artifact Piece—where he turned his Indigenous body into a museum exhibit—was a 1980s breakthrough. But the power of his work doesn’t end there.

By Richard William Hill

https://canadianart.ca/features/james-luna-in-memoriam/

Public Talks + Conferences
Thursday, Feb 22, 2018 – 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Reliance Theatre | First floor

Join us for an artist talk by Shawn Hunt.

Shawn Hunt was born in Vancouver Canada in 1975. He is an artist of Heiltsuk, French and Scottish ancestry. He has a diploma in studio art from Capilano college as well as a BFA from the University of British Columbia where he majored in sculpture and drawing. Shawn comes from a family of artists. His father is Bradley Hunt, a prominent Heiltsuk artist with whom he apprenticed for 5 years. Shawn also did an apprenticeship with Coast Salish painter Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun from 2012 – 2015. Shawn’s work takes on a complexity of influence from both his training in traditional Heiltsuk design, wood carving, jewelry carving and painting and his engagement with contemporary questions of subversion, preconception and fluid meanings. Hunt has recently completed a commissioned project with Microsoft and presented a projection mapped video at the Vancouver Art Gallery for Facade Fest 2018.

Visual Art Forums is presented by the Audain Faculty of Art.