Riot Rock Rattle Workshop by Tsēma Igharas

Part of the Community Arts Space: Art is Change
Presented in partnership with the Feminist Art Museum (FAM)

FREE REGISTRATION

Enrollment is FREE but limited to 15 people. Please only enroll if you can commit to both days.

Riot Rock Rattles is part of an ongoing project by artist Tsēma Tamara Skubovius called LAND|MINE, inspired by material and mechanical relationships that link bodies to the land.

The rattles will be activated by glass beads inside shells of copper, rawhide, and ceramic—materials that assume both cultural and industrial value. “Riot Rocks” are a size of rock or fragment of brick that is hand-held and can be perceived as a threat. The potential for riot or ceremony is the tension in the objects (rattle or otherwise), and a metaphor for the resonance of human activity on the land. The aim is to realize Indigenous methodologies individually and together as a community through listening, talking, and creating awareness of bodies acting on the land and making new histories.

This two-part workshop is presented by the Feminist Art Museum, a collective project by Xenia Benivolski and Su-Ying Lee, for an exhibition that will take place at the Gardiner from August 9 to 17, part of the Community Arts Space: Art is Change project.

Please note that the rattles will be included in the exhibition and can be picked up at the project’s conclusion.

Saturday May 27
Location: Tommy Thompson Park and Brick Works
10 am: Meet in the parking lot of Tommy Thompson Park. We will be outside, please be prepared to get dirty.
11 am: Leave Tommy Thompson Park and go to Brick Works for a potluck lunch and rattle casting (please arrange for your own transportation).
12:30 – 1:30 pm: Potluck lunch at Brick Works
1:30 – 4 pm: Mould making and sewing
4 – 4:30 pm: Clean up

Bring: Scissors, small pliers if you have your own, and a writing utensil. For lunch, bring water, your own bowl and cutlery.

This event is hosted at Evergreen Brick Works through the Don River Valley Park project.

Saturday June 3
Location: Gardiner Museum
10:30 am to 2 pm: For the second portion of the workshop we will be releasing the rocks and brick from the moulds and filling them with material that we have collected to put inside our rattles. Examples of material can be beads, pebbles, or corn; but the idea is that you, the participant, bring whatever you feel will make a nice sound or material/objects you want to capture in the rattles.
Lunch: We will have another potluck lunch for this session.

Bring: Scissors, small pliers if you own some and a writing utensil. For lunch, bring water, your own bowl and cutlery.

About Tsēma Igharas

Tsēma Igharas (formally Tamara Skubovius) is an interdisciplinary artist and member of the Tahltan First Nation. She studied Northwest Coast Formline Design at K’saan (2005/06), has a BFA from ECUAD (2011), and an MFA from OCADU (2016). Tsēma has shown in the notable group show, Interweavings, for emerging First Nations artists who have previously won a YVR Art Foundation scholarship (RAG 2014/15), and was recently selected for Contemporary Native Art Biennial: Culture Shift in Montreal, and the Luminato Festival in Toronto (2016). Tsēma 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.

About the Feminist Art Museum (FAM)
The Feminist Art Museum (FAM) is conceived of by Xenia Benivolski and Su-Ying Lee as a national, multi-site pilot project comprised of a network of existing art museums, galleries, and organizations. Feminist leaders in Canadian art organizations unite under FAM to close the representational gap. FAM isn’t exclusive to feminist artists. We are committed to contemporary art and its encompassing discourses. Feminists undertake operations and creative direction.

Institution building, place, space, and land have figured prominently into the conception of FAM. At the Gardiner Museum, using brick as both a metaphoric and material reference FAM asks: What are ways of being on the land that have been supplanted by colonialism and patriarchy?

Brick is the literal material laid down to occupy this land. Like clay, it is extracted, fired, shaped, and transformed. Also functioning as a symbol of destruction, brick and rock throwing has been historically used as a method for the unarmed population to protest a governing power’s authority. How do we destroy colonial approaches to land-use that devastate Indigenous communities and are detrimental to the environment?

Our program at the Gardiner Museum is a series of early conversations that are organized to help inform our approach to working as the Feminist Art Museum.

Image: Documentation from Hearings (a project curated by Maiko Tanaka in 2016 in Todmoren Mills). Produced with Trinity Square Video. Photos by Natalie Logan and Yuula Benivolski.