In-Conversation: Terrance Houle and Migueltzinta Solís

August 24
2-3 PM | Auditorium

Please join us for an informal conversation with Terrance Houle and Migueltzinta Solís, exploring some of the intersecting themes across both artists’ practices. During this performative talk, Solís will be reading Houle’s tarot cards, marking the very first time that Houle’s cards are read.

Free with registration.

This conversation is programmed in conjunction with The Wagon Burner and Other Stories, on view at Contemporary Calgary until September 8, 2024.

Terrance Houle
(he/him)

Terrance Houle (b. 1975) is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary artist and member of the Kainai Nation, with ancestry from the Sandy Bay Reservation, Manitoba. His late mother, Maxine WeaselFat, was a member of the Kainai Nation; and his father, Donald Vernon Houle, is from the Sandy Bay Reservation, Manitoba. Both were third-generation residential school survivors, with the latter currently residing in the Blood Reservation in Southern Alberta. Houle’s work ranges from the subversive, the humorous, and the absurd to the solemn and the poetic. His practice often relates to the physical body, addressing questions around history, colonization, Indigeneity, and representation in popular culture, as well as memory, home, and reserve communities. He recently co-directed a short animation film, Otanimm/Onnimm, with his daughter Neko. The film has been widely screened at festivals in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, New Zealand, Vancouver, and Oxford, among others.

Migueltzinta Solís
(he/him)

Migueltzinta Solís is a trans Chicanx interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator, and Tarot practitioner. A creator of immersive site-specific experiences, his creative practice blends performance, video, installation, painting, and textile. Migueltzinta writes across multiple genres and forms, working towards a counter-institutional poetics of knowledge mobilization. Theme parks, amateur porn, Indigenous futurities, colonial imaginaries, queer materialities, and (un)belonging have been recurring themes. Migueltzinta holds an MFA in Art and a PhD in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought from the University of Lethbridge/Iniskim in Treaty 7, traditional Blackfoot territory.

Supporters

Exposure Photography Festival: Conversations on Healing Through the Arts

February 4 | 1:00 PM | Auditorium

The Exposure Photography Festival presents a brand-new series of conversations that respond to Exposure’s curated exhibitions and explore the significant topics the artists address through their work. These informal events will be held at Contemporary Calgary during the twentieth-anniversary edition of the festival.  

This conversation will be moderated by Autumn Whiteway (Night Singing Woman), Curator, Indigenous Art, Glenbow Museum, and will include presentations by Exposure Artists Pippa Healy (UK), Justin Carney (Indianapolis, USA) and Lisa McCarty (Boston, USA).

 FREE with registration.

 This event is supported by Calgary Arts Development, Contemporary Calgary, Trico Changemakers Studio, Elephant Artist Relief Society & CRATE Art Therapy.

Supported by

University of Calgary x Exposure Photography Festival: Arctic Imagination - Lecture with Louie Palu

February 4 | 3:30 PM | Auditorium

Photographer and filmmaker Louie Palu has been making work about the Arctic since 1993. His latest body of work Distant Early Warning provides a window into the state of the militarization in the Arctic, documenting the legacies of the Cold War. The changes in the region are exacerbated by the many unknowns the Arctic faces, among them the warming of the planet. What began as a Guggenheim Fellowship evolved into an assignment for National Geographic Magazine, multiple art installations, and more. Taken as a whole, the series examines the growing geopolitical tensions and changing life around Inuit communities in one of the planet's harshest climates.

 FREE with registration.

Presented by the University of Calgary Department of Art and Art History and Exposure Photography Festival.

About the Speaker

Louie Palu (he/him)

Louie Palu is a photographer and filmmaker whose work has examined social political issues for 30-years. He is best known for hybrid approaches to creating work that incorporates art and journalism. Louie’s projects have been selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship and World Press Photo Award, and has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Dok Munich Film Festival. His work is held in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and National Gallery of Canada. His work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, US National Portrait Gallery and Brooklyn Museum. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Supported by

Exposure Photography Festival: Conversations on the Family Archive

February 3 | 1:00 PM | Auditorium

The Exposure Photography Festival presents a brand-new series of conversations that respond to Exposure’s curated exhibitions and explore the significant topics the artists address through their work. These informal events will be held at Contemporary Calgary during the twentieth-anniversary edition of the festival.  

This conversation will be moderated by Beth Kane, Independent Curator and Festival Manager, Exposure Photography Festival, and will include presentations by Exposure Artists Rachel Nixon (British Columbia), Molly Steels (Ontario) and Raeann Kit-Yee Cheung. 

 FREE with registration.

This event is supported by Calgary Arts Development, Contemporary Calgary & Trico Changemakers Studio.

Supported by

Exposure Photography Festival: Conversations with Newcomer Artists

February 2 | 6:00 PM | Auditorium

The Exposure Photography Festival presents a brand-new series of conversations that respond to Exposure’s curated exhibitions and explore the significant topics the artists address through their work. These informal events will be held at Contemporary Calgary during the twentieth-anniversary edition of the festival.  

 This conversation will be moderated by Toyin Oladele, Founder & Executive Director, Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation, and will include presentations by Exposure Artists Santosh Korthiwada and Maksim Tataev.

 FREE with registration.

This event is supported by Calgary Arts Development, Contemporary Calgary & ICAI.

Supported by

Contemporary Conversations with

Lucy Sparrow

Thursday, May 25 | 7:00 – 8:00 PM

Contemporary Calgary is excited to welcome UK artist Lucy Sparrow for an artist talk on May 25th at 7 pm. Known for her tactile, colourful felt creations, Sparrow has taken the art world by storm with her installations of everyday spaces, including a fully-felted supermarket, a deli, and a sex shop. During the talk, Sparrow will discuss her latest installation, McHappiness, a fully-functioning felted burger restaurant and homage to the golden arches. Join us for an evening of insight and inspiration as Sparrow shares her artistic process and commentary on the state of consumer culture.

About the Artist

Lucy Sparrow

Lucy Sparrow is one of the most exciting and original artists working in the UK today. Her practice is quirky yet subversive, luring the audience in with her soft, tactile, colourful felt creations before hitting them hard with her comment on subjects including the demise of the traditional high street and the fragmentation of community.  

She took the art world by storm in Summer 2014 with the opening of her fully-stocked felt Cornershop installation in London’s East End. With queues around the block and wall to wall media coverage, it was both a commercial and critical success. Warmongery, a controversial sell-out installation exploring the issues around gun control and mental health followed in May 2015 and in October 2015, Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium opened its doors in the back streets of London’s Soho, showcasing the artist’s complete commitment to her artistic vision, recreating an entire sex shop in glorious technicolour felt, including a fully working, animated felt peep show. In 2016, the BBC commissioned Lucy to recreates the Crown Jewels in felt, to celebrate HRH The Queen’s official 90th birthday.

In May 2017, Lucy undertook her first solo show in the US, opening The Convenience Store, a New York bodega stocked with 9,000 felted artworks. Scheduled to run for a month, the store was an instant hit, selling out in just over two weeks.  The bodega dominated the NYC art scene, appearing everywhere from the New York Times to the massive TV screens on Times Square.  Returning to the US in August 2018, Lucy opened Sparrow Mart, a fully-felted supermarket in Downtown Los Angeles. Complete with 31,000 hand-painted works. Another instant hit, it generated global press attention and a round the block queue.

December 2018 saw Lucy’s work unveiled in the windows of the Hermés flagship Store on Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills and she dominated the headlines at Miami Art Week with her installation piece, Triple Art Bypass, that saw the artist perform ‘live’ surgery to huge crowds at Context Art Fair.

In 2019, Lucy created the cover artwork for the Spring issue of Juxtapoz magazine and opened her debut museum exhibition Lucy Sparrow’s Felt Imaginarium at M Woods in Beijing, China. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Rockefeller Centre in NYC played host to Lucy’s on 6th, a fully stocked felt deli and immersive art experience.

In 2021, Lucy returned home for her first UK exhibition in over five years, opening The Bourdon Street Chemist in the heart of Mayfair in London. This incredibly successful installation gained blanket media coverage, saw fans queueing around the block and became the must-see British exhibition post-Covid.

In April 2021 Lucy was selected as guest artist for series 2 two of Grayson Perry’s Art Club.  Her work will be exhibited in the accompanying exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art gallery between December 2021 and May 2022.

January 2022 saw Lucy return to the US for to unveil her  most ambitious installation yet. She unveiled Tampa Fresh Foods, a 3,000 sq ft hypermarket filled with over 50,000 felt groceries, a Cuban sandwich bar and humidor, that went viral on tiktok, creating hour-long queues and global coverage.

In June 2022 the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall unveiled Lucy’s fully-felted 6-metre long installation entitled The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Lunch, created to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 70th year on the British throne. In July, the work was installed in Buckingham Palace as part of the summer exhibition.

For Frieze Week 2022, Lucy installed a felt covered ice cream van in Regent’s Park selling Mr Frieze ice pops, Mr Whippy 99s and a full selection of childhood favourite ice lollies.

In November 2022, Lucy opened Felt ‘R’ Us, a pop-up Christmas shop and exhibition housing her most loved installations.  Meanwhile in Miami, Lucy treated Art Week visitors to McHappiness A fully functioning felted burger restaurant and homage to the golden arches.

Lucy Sparrow lives in a felt cave in an undisclosed location, with her companion Sebastian.

Supporters

In-Conversation with Robert Houle & Wanda Nanibush

Extended as a public program of Red is Beautiful, artist Robert Houle and curator Wanda Nanibush walk us through the genesis of this curatorial project, highlighting key works from Houle’s celebrated practice. They’ll also elaborate on the relevance of the show today, especially within our current socio-political context. 

About the Speakers

ROBERT HOULE

ARTIST

Robert Houle (b. 1947, St. Boniface, Manitoba) is an Anishinaabe Saulteaux contemporary artist, curator, writer, critic, and educator. For more than fifty years, he has worked to advocate for First Nations artistic representation and sovereignty and has established himself as an essential force within the artistic community in Canada and around the world. Houle studied at the University of Manitoba, McGill University, and the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria, and for many years taught Indigenous Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design. From 1977 to 1981, he was Curator of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization). As a curator, he is also responsible for landmark exhibitions such as Land Spirit Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada (1992).

Houle’s various solo exhibitions include Lost Tribes, Hood College, Maryland; Indians from A to Z and Sovereignty over Subjectivity, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Palisade, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Anishnabe Walker Court, an intervention at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Paris/Ojibwa, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, Peterborough, and Windsor; Shaman Dream in Colour, Kinsman Robinson Galleries, Toronto; Looking for the Shaman, John B. Aird Gallery,Toronto; Robert Houle: Pahgedenaun, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; and Robert Houle: Histories, McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario. 

He has also participated in several important international group exhibitions, including Recent Generations: Native American Art from 1950 to 1987, Heard Museum, Phoenix; Traveling Theory, Jordan National Gallery, Amman, Jordan; Notions of Conflict, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Real Fictions: Four Canadian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; Tout le temps/Every Time, 2000 Montreal Biennale; We Come in Peace...: Histories of the Americas, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal; Sakahàn, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and Toronto: Tributes and + Tributaries, 1971–1989 and Every, Now, Then: Reframing Nationhood, both at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

His artistic achievements have garnered him numerous awards and accolades, including the 2001 Toronto Arts Award for the Visual Arts; the 2015 Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts; and most recently, the 2020 Founder’s Achievement Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. He has been awarded two honorary doctorates, one in 2014 from his alma mater, the University of Manitoba and a Doctorate of Laws from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in 2016. Houle has also served on various boards and advisory committees, including those of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, The Indigenous Curatorial Collective, A Space, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto.