This past spring, students in ARTH 381: Artist in Society (withProfessor Catherine Soussloff) visited Cindy Sherman, an important retrospective of the artist’s work on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In the course, which investigates the figure of the visual artist from the early modern period to the present, students were asked to write an impressionistic account of the exhibition accompanied by a selfie taken against the backdrop of Sherman’s work. Thank you to students who shared some of their selfies for the newsletter!
Professor Catherine Soussloff’s work on Michel Foucault continues following the publication of her book Foucault on Painting (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) with an article, “Painting for Fools,” which is forthcoming from the journal Theory, Culture and Society. The article explores Foucault’s work on the theme of the ship of fools inHistory of Madness, Bosch’s Ship of Fools painting in the Louvre, and a little-known monumental drawing by the writer and artist Pierre Klossowski on the theme. She has used the newly deposited manuscripts on Foucault at the Bibliothèque nationale and Klossowski’s theories on painting in a new interpretation of their understanding of madness.
ProfessorSoussloff’s work on Viennese art history and Jewish identity continues with a forthcoming essay “Puppets in Diaspora,” which examines the work of the linguist Andreas Tietze on the Turkish shadow theatre in light of the themes of emigration, phantasy, and history sedimented in these folk art artefacts from the Ottoman Empire.
In October 2019, Professor Georgios Makris gave a talk at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University. His recent projects include a talk at an international workshop titled Textiles in the Greek World from Antiquity to the Modern Era, held at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in April 2020. This summer, Makris returned to the field to lead the surface survey of the Molyvoti, Thrace, Archaeological Project, a collaborative and multidisciplinary archaeological expedition in northeastern Greece. His SSHRC project “Ornaments in Life and Death: Jewelry in the Byzantine World” examines a number of precious objects worn on the bodies of deceased people at a medieval cemetery in northwestern Greece, then part of the Byzantine world. By focusing on the excavated material, this project seeks to delve deeply into the notions of ownership, self-representation, and human behaviour in Byzantium and beyond. Professor Makris presented his SSRHC paper in the UBC CNERS Seminar on October 14, 2020.
AHVA alumnus Ken Lum (MFA’85) received two major prizes this year in recognition of his extraordinary artistic career. In February, he won the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. In the words of nominator Brian McBay, Lum’s work “manages to depict great tensions in the collective identity of people and cultures who face the difficulties of authenticity and social belonging.” The work of fellow winners in the category, including Anna Torma, Dana Claxton, Deanna Bowen, Jorge Lozano Lorza, Michael Fernandes, Ruth Cuthand, and Zainub Verjee, is currently on exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta (until February 2021).
Lum also received the 2019 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada. Awarded by the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario, the $50,000 prize includes a solo exhibition at the AGO, scheduled for 2021. Previous recipients include Liz Magor, General Idea, Stan Douglas, Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Michael Snow, and Rebecca Belmore. Congratulations, Ken!
Ken Lum graduated with an MFA in Visual Art in 1985 and began his teaching career in the department in 1990. He would go on to become chair of our MFA program (2000–06), before accepting an appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presidential Professor and chair of Fine Arts in the Weitzman School of Design.
Known for his conceptual and representational art in a number of media, including painting, sculpture, and photography, Lum has an extensive exhibition history spanning thirty years, with work in major exhibitions such as Documenta 11, the Venice Biennale, São Paulo Biennial, Shanghai Biennale, Carnegie Triennial, Sydney Biennale, Busan Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Moscow Biennial, and Whitney Biennial, among others. He has realized a number of public art projects for the cities of Vienna, Utrecht, Leiden, St. Moritz, St. Louis, Toronto, and Vancouver, where, for a commission for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, he produced the iconicMonument for East Vancouver illuminated cross,which transformed into a permanent landmark a decades-old graffiti symbol well-known throughout the city’s east side.
A co-founder and founding editor of Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Lum has published extensively, including Everything Is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991–2018, published this year by Concordia University Press. This new book, edited by, Kitty Scott, chief curator at the National Gallery of Canada, includes diary entries, articles, catalogue essays, and curatorial statements.
In 2019–20, the department hosted Stan Douglas as Koerner Artist in Residence. Douglas gave a public talk, conducted studio visits with MFA students, and led a seminar with a table reading of his latest play.
Stan Douglas is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver and Los Angeles. Since 1990 his films, videos, and photographs have been seen in exhibitions internationally, including four Venice Biennales and Documentas IX, X, and XI. A survey of recent work, Stan Douglas: Mise en scène, travelled throughout Europe from 2013 until the end of 2015 and his play Helen Lawrence toured internationally until 2017. He was the 2016 recipient of the Hasselblad Prize and since 2009 he has been a core faculty member in the Grad Art Department at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
Germaine Koh will be our Koerner Artist in Residence for 2021.She will create a new body of work while she is here, making use of the photography and workshop facilities. Her work is concerned with the significance of everyday actions, familiar objects, and common places. Her work has been shown at numerous international venues, including the BALTIC Centre (Newcastle), De Appel (Amsterdam), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong), Frankfurter Kunstverein, Bloomberg SPACE (London), The Power Plant (Toronto), Seoul Museum of Art, Artspace (Sydney), The British Museum (London), the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and the Liverpool, Sydney and Montreal biennials. Koh was a recipient of the 2010 VIVA Award and a finalist for the 2004 Sobey Art Award. Formerly an Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada, she is also an independent curator and partner in the independent record label weewerk.
The Koerner Artist in Residence Program in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory is made possible by the generous support of the Koerner Foundation and a private BC-based foundation.
Professor Maureen Ryan (PhD, Chicago; MA, BA, UBC) has retired after thirty-two years with the department. Her lectures and seminars at the undergraduate and graduate levels took up the charged cultural politics associated with constructs of difference—gender, sexualities, religion, ethnicity, and class—within the frame of global networks, mobile populations, and the fraught and often aestheticized histories of migration and the violence of displacement. Former students still exclaim she was the best teacher and her outstanding pedagogy was awarded the prestigious Killam Teaching Award. She is an activist gardener who works steadfastly for public community gardening. We wish her all the best and thank her for the outstanding contribution she made to AHVA.
Professor Barbara Zeigler (MFA, BFA University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) retires in December 2020 after forty-one years on our Visual Art faculty. Working in printmaking, photography, drawing, installation, video, and collaborative public art projects, throughout her career Barbara has sought to prompt questions as to the character and consequences of our existing cultural paradigms. She has taught the theory and practice of multidisciplinary printmaking to legions of students as technologies and techniques within the field of print constantly evolved, and she was instrumental in the creation of the new Print Media Research Centre, which dramatically changed the printmaking program in the department. We wish Barbara all the best in the retirement and look forward to hearing more about her future projects! Barbara recently reflected on her time in the department:
“Forty-one and a half years teaching at UBC! Imagine. The time has passed by so quickly and there is still so much I would like to do, experiment with in my approach to teaching, and explore through my research. I have certainly enjoyed the challenging artwork and discussions of my wonderful students and colleagues over all these years, and the thoughtful assistance from our excellent staff.
My research will continue, as I have been setting up a printing studio (digital and traditional) in a log cabin on Mayne Island, not far from the ferry. I plan to carry on visual print, drawing, and digital research there, beginning with increasing my understanding of the ecology of a small pond on the property. If anyone is going to Mayne Island and wants to stop by, please just contact me. Discussions are always welcome.
A high point over the all these years was the establishment of the Print Media Research Centre in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the subsequent building of the Audain Art Centre in 2013, a wonderful new facility in which it is now housed. Well staffed and equipped through continual requests over the years, it is a state-of-the-art printmaking studio. It is my hope that student, staff, and faculty research related to the ever-expanding and developing field of print media will continue in this facility for many years to come.”
Barbara Zeigler, Critical Mass, State II, 2012, digital archival pigment print, 13 x 19 in.
Barbara Zeigler, Under Siege, 2004, digital archival pigment print, 44 x 43 in.
Michael Mao (BA’81; MLIS’84), Curator of the AHVA Visual Resources Centre, is retiring in December 2020after more than thirty-five years of continuous service to the department and the university. On the occasion of his retirement, we asked Michael to recall some highlights from his UBC career. We thank him for stewarding our collection of visual resources through constant technological change with unstinting care and enthusiasm. He will be greatly missed for fostering such a warm and welcoming environment in the VRC for our community.
“It has been a long and fulfilling career working together with my knowledgeable and supportive colleagues who share a common goal of contributing to the wellbeing of this dynamic department.
There are many fond memories to cherish starting with, for instance, when I was told by my predecessor in a trusting and affectionate way, “You’ll find out in no time how to run this place” and by my first boss with unwavering support, “It’s now up to you to build this domain” and by two donors with the VRC in mind always as the recipient, “We’ll bring back digital images of Japan’s cultural heritage as requested instead of sake for you.” Many moons have come and gone, the VRC remains a vibrant hub that continues to provide dependable, specialized services with its professional and unique digital/analogue resources of visual culture to support scholarly and social activities.
Witnessing the many vigorous changes in the department, I extend my warmest of wishes to everyone in AHVA for every success in 2020 and beyond.”
We welcomed new faculty members to the department in 2019.Thanks for joining us!
ProfessorGeorgios (Yorgos) Makris (PhD, University of Birmingham)specializes in the arts of Byzantium, with particular emphasis on the material culture and archaeology of monasticism as well as the dissemination and use of portable objects across the eastern Mediterranean.Makris is currently at work on his first monograph that examines the sacred topography, artistic production, and lifecycle of monasticism in the European hinterland of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, within its Balkan and Mediterranean context. As an active archaeologist, he has participated in a number of archaeological projects and is currently co-director of the field survey of the Molyvoti, Thrace, Archaeological Project (MTAP). Yorgosjoined the department in July 2019.
Jeneen Frei Njootli (MFA’17) is a2SQ Vuntut Gwitchin artist who was raised by their lesbian moms outside of the Yukon. In their award-winning interdisciplinary practice, they use media such as performance, sound, textiles, collaboration, workshops, and feral scholarship. A co-creator of ReMatriate Collective, they are invested in Indigenous sovereignty and decolonization, and are concerned with the production, dissemination, and embodiment of images. Their works and performances have been held in many territories, both locally and internationally. Check out their book my auntie bought all her skidoos with bead money (Contemporary Art Gallery, 2018). Jeneen joined the faculty in July 2019.
It is with great pleasure that I write to you and welcome you to the relaunch of the AHVA newsletter! Building upon the stellar work of several former directors and staff, we felt it was time to reach out with a semi-annual update to keep in touch and to build and maintain relations. We are in relations here in the department and with all of you.
Having completed six seasons as Head, I have learned so much about the internal functions of the department and the larger university. I am elated to say that I enjoy my position immensely and am here to do good work for you—our alumni, faculty, lecturers, sessional instructors, staff, students, and friends of the department. This issue brings you news about all the goings-on in the department.
As a department, we have embarked on an important decolonizing project. Recently, nine staff and faculty completed the Squamish-led leadership transformation workshop Mi tel’nexw, which means “to figure it out” in the local Salish language. One teaching that has stayed with me from that workshop is being with one another in respect. Another recalls my own Lakota teachings about the medicine wheel and leading a life in which the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional realms are in balance. All staff and faculty are currently working with one of the facilitators of the Mi tel’nexw workshop, Ta7talíya Michelle Lorna Nahanee, who is leading us all through a two-part seminar called Decolonize First.
In this moment of global pandemic, our department is operating mostly online and as we strive to give the best instruction to students, and maintain good relations with one another, this newsletter reaches out to all of you in the hope that you and your loved ones are safe and well, and that you are enjoying life with music, literature, art, storytelling, and dancing in the living room! Here’s to being in good relations with that which gives you pleasure, nourishment, and overall lifts you up!
We welcome your comments, news, suggestions, and proclamations! I look forward to hearing from you—keep in touch!
This book consolidates our understanding of Dana Claxton’s dominant and recurring themes—indigenous history, culture, beauty and spirituality. While Claxton’s art often alludes to the destructive legacy of colonialism, it also celebrates the resurgence of First Nations’ presence and contemporary identity. What emerges is an artist delivering works of ever greater power and conviction. With her expansive and genre-defying practice—photography, videos, mixed-media installations, text works, performances and curatorial work—she continues to critically reimagine the space of the gallery to be accessible for wider Indigenous audiences and to uphold new understandings of beauty.
When we walk into a gallery, we have a fairly good idea where the building begins and ends; and inside, while observing a painting, we are equally confident in distinguishing between the painting-proper and its frame and borders. Yet, things are often more complicated. A building defines an exterior space just as much as an interior, and what we perceive to be ornamental and marginal to a given painting may in fact be central to what it represents. In this volume, a simple question is presented: instead of dichotomous separations between inside and outside, or exterior and interior, what other relationships can we think of?
The first book of its kind to grapple with this question, Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture focuses on a wide spectrum of mediums and topics, including painted manuscripts, objects, architectural decoration, architecture and urban planning, and photography. Bringing together scholars with diverse methodologies-who work on a geographical span stretching from India to Spain and Nigeria, and across a temporal spectrum from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century-this original book also poses engaging questions about the boundaries of the field.
