imagineNATIVE Presents Announces 2017 Visual Arts Programming

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, October 18 - 22, 2017, is proud to announce this year's visual arts programming including exhibitions, installations, interactive pieces and the annual Art Crawl.

On Thursday, October 19, imagineNATIVE will present the internationally-celebrated A Wall is a Screen, an interactive nighttime event that is part-walking-tour and part-film-screening that transforms the way people look at and interact with the city. The 90 minute event will stop at undisclosed locations along a designated urban path and will Indigenize the environment by projecting short films onto various surfaces. This will be the first time ever A Wall is a Screen, based in Hamburg, Germany, will feature all Indigenous-made short films.

The popular and now expanding imagineNATIVE's Art Crawl will add additional stops for a total of three different locations on Friday, October 20, showcasing eight exhibitions at seven different galleries while offering the opportunity to hear from curators and artists at featured talks. This year's Art Crawl will begin at OCADU with two exhibitions. For This Land: Inside Elemental, a co-production opening the brand new Onsite Gallery at OCADU, explores the internalization of one's traditional territory using an immersive multimedia installation through sound, video, performance and digital languages. raise a flag: works from the Indigenous Art Collection (2000-2015) highlights selected works from a national heritage collection of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis art. This exhibition focuses on recent acquisitions, that chronicle significant national narratives reflecting upon Canadian heritage, diversity and collective memory by 32 artists including Lionel Peyachew, Elisapee Ishulutaq, and the late Annie Pootoogook.

The Art Crawl continues onto the second location at the iconic 401 Richmond building with five Exhibition Premieres including: Mourning and Mayhem: The work of Adrian Stimson at A Space Gallery. In his first solo show in Ontario, Stimson's interdisciplinary work includes paintings, installations, photography, sculpture and a performance. Often using materials like buffalo hide or the remnants of the actual residential school that he attended, his work enacts a reversal of the value system that supports colonialism and the value system that marginalized Indigenous people as uncivilized; Channel 51: Igloolik - The Filmmaking Process, at Trinity Square Video, will present selected pieces from and inspired by the Video Work of the Arnait and Isuma Video Collectives in Nunavut including three carvings from the film Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner. Spanning over three decades, their prop and set construction has been celebrated for rejuvenating and maintaining Inuit technology and skills; and Skawennati: for the ages, at The Commons, is a survey of new media works by Skawennati, winner of imagineNATIVE's 2009 Best New Media Award. These works use photographs, projections, websites and moving images of all shapes and sizes to depict a movement through time.

Audio installations during the Art Crawl at 401 Richmond include Territ-Aur(i)al Imprints at Prefix Gallery and Raven Chacon: Report at YYZ Artists' Outlet. Territ-Aur(i)al Imprints is a selection of sound artworks by Indigenous Artists from Canada and Latin America, created as part of imagineNATIVE's first audio-centric Indigenous collaborative exchange. Raven Chacon: Report highlights three areas in the American Southwest chosen for their quietness and are presented as field recordings, amplified to their maximum volume.

The evening will end with Installation Preview: Transmissions Part II at Wallace Studios, the third and final Art Crawl location. This is a unique behind-the-scenes preview of filmmaker LiSa Jackson's first art exhibition Transmissions, as well as watching the filming of Unearthed, a live performance that will be a centrepiece of the installation, starring Jeneen Frei Njootli and live scored by Raven Chacon and Laura Ortman.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous festival showcasing innovation in film, video, audio and digital media. The Festival presents the most compelling and distinctive works from Canada and around the globe, reflecting the diversity of the world's Indigenous nations and illustrating the vitality and excellence of Native art and culture in contemporary media.
imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival
October 18-22, 2017

Thursday, October 19, 2017
A WALL IS A SCREEN
Art Gallery of Ontario (meet at southwest corner of Dundas & McCaul)
7:30pm

Friday, October 20, 2017
ART CRAWL
Onsite Gallery; A Space Gallery, Trinity Square Video,
Prefix Gallery, YYZ Artists' Outlet,
The Commons at 401 Richmond St.; Wallace Studios
5:00pm - 10:00pm

For This Land: Inside Elemental & raise a flag: Works from the Indigenous Art Collection
Onsite Gallery, Ground Floor, 199 Richmond Street West
Curator & Artists Talk: 5:00pm

Mourning and Mayhem: The Work of Adrian Stimson
A Space Gallery, Suite 110, Ground Floor, 401 Richmond Street West
Curator & Artist Talk with Performance by Adrian Stimson: 6:00pm

Channel 51: Igloolik
Trinity Square Video, Suite 121, Ground Floor, 401 Richmond Street West
Curator Talk: 7:00pm

Terr(i)tAurial Imprints
Prefix Gallery, Suite 121, Ground Floor, 401 Richmond Street West
Artists Talk: 7:30pm

Raven Chacon
YYZ Artists' Outlet, Suite 140, Ground Floor, 401 Richmond Street West
Artist Talk: 8:00pm

Skawennati: for the ages
The Commons, Suite 450, Fourth Floor, 401 Richmond Street West
Artist Talk: 8:30pm

Transmissions
Wallace Studios, 258 Wallace Avenue
Performance & Artist Talk: 9:30pm

For more information please call 416.585.2333 or visit www.imagineNATIVE.org.

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