Let’s Talk About… Home

April 11

6-10 PM | Auditorium + Atrium

The current housing crisis has been decades in the making. Housing is about more than mere shelter; it is a deeply personal and highly political reflection of what (and who) we value. Governments, scholars, professionals, and citizens continually try to shape cities into their own visions of 'home.' Many of these visions exclude Indigenous peoples, poor, racialized, and other marginalized communities. The consequences and systemic inequities of these housing policies are still being lived today, and exacerbated by the convergence of other crises: affordability, health care, climate change, and social and political polarization.

On April 11, join our panellists as they discuss the need for housing as part of a healthy and equitable society, and explore ideas to tackle these challenges alongside communities and governments.

Panellists

Speaker: Ryan Hall - Ecottrust / Siksika Nation Housing

Speaker: Dustin Couzens - Principal MODA Architecture

Speaker: Dr. Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike - Writer & Poet

Speakers: Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski - WAI Architecture Think Tank

Moderator: Alicia Ta

Let’s Talk About… Home

April 4-18, 2024

Atrium at Contemporary Calgary

What does home mean to you? Is it a place you dwell, a cherished emotion, a loved one, or a treasured keepsake? Engage in our immersive art installation at the Atrium Space at Contemporary Calgary, where your reflections become part of a collective exploration. Join us in celebrating the diverse perspectives and interpretations of home.

Free to the public for viewing.

Supporters

Contemporary Kids
Shapes, Composition, and Kinetic

October 29 & November 19
10:00 AM-12:00 PM

For children ages 4-12.

Join us for an Exhibition Tour and Art in Motion Workshop inspired by the work of Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins.

Our free onsite Contemporary Kids programs invite children to learn about modern and contemporary art through unique and engaging art activities. 

Inspired by installation and paintings from “Balancing Act” by Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, kids will engage in a hands-on project where they will explore art in physical motion. Using paper and crafting materials, participants will create simple kinetic compositions while considering the relationship of moving elements in Kinetic art.

Maximum group of 30 children, with one guardian per child. 
Snacks and workshop supplies will be provided.

This workshop is offered on two dates for your convenience: Sunday, October 29 and Sunday, November 19. Please choose a session that suits your schedule best.

Sunday, October 29
10:00am-12:00pm

Sunday, November 19
10:00am-12:00pm

About the facilitator,
Yilu (she/her)
TD Educational Coordinator

Yilu Xing is an artist-educator with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Alberta University of the Arts and a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the University of Alberta, specializing in Printmaking. Xing is the recipient of grants and scholarships from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, which support her research exploring themes related to culinary cultures, human connections, and the transmission of traditions within immigrant families. Her recent work includes public-based interactive installations, prints, drawings, ceramics, and videos. Xing has also taught art courses within the community and at the University of Alberta.

Supported By

Supported by

Clay Workshop with Nurgül Rodriguez

Saturday, February 25th | 4:00-5:30 PM

Clay tablets are one of the most ancient writing mediums, serving as the earliest historical documents. In this workshop, Nurgül Rodriguez prompts us to think about immigration documents in general and the ‘Landing Paper’ that is issued to new immigrants in particular. 

The workshop will involve making one’s own clay tablet, with each participant choosing a word or collection of words that resonate most with their sense of identity. 

This workshop has been developed as an extension of Rodriguez’s installation- In a New Land… Be Longing, which is currently on view in the exhibition Human Capital. 

Materials will be provided. 

This workshop is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Human Capital, on view until April 16, 2023.

About the artist,
Nurgül Rodriguez (she/her) 

Nurgül Rodriguez is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice and a PhD student at Werklund School of Education. She has an active individual practice of disciplines and media including porcelain, installation, handmade paper, printmaking, three-dimensional pieces, and more recently socially engaged and collaborative projects. Her work is social, political and personal with a focus on issues of immigration, diasporas, borders and cultures. She explores becoming a diasporic individual during identity formation within a new culture. Nurgul settled in Calgary in 2009 after many nomadic years of living in Turkey, the United States and Spain with her family. She currently lives in Calgary making, writing, teaching, collaborating and always learning.

Calligratherapy: Family Workshop

Sunday, February 19th | 1:00-3:00 PM

Create a Unique Family Portrait with Chinese Zodiac Animals at the Calligratherapy Workshop for Families!

Join us at the Contemporary Calgary for an unforgettable bonding experience with your family! Create a unique portrait of Chinese Zodiac animals and learn how to use ink and brush with Calligratherapy Workshop.

At the Workshop, you will be provided with all the necessary materials to create your own Chinese Zodiac family portrait. Each participant will receive practice sheets,  a high-quality pre-framed Xuan Paper of 10X12 inches size and a set of ink and brushes. 

The workshop is designed in such a way that everyone regardless of prior calligraphy skills can join in and have fun while creating beautiful art together as a family. Our experienced instructors will guide you every step of the way to ensure success in completing your unique masterpiece! 

Workshop supplies will be provided.

Calligratherapy: A Brush & Bubbly Experience

Friday, February 17th | 7:00-9:00 PM

Welcome the New Year of the Rabbit with Chinese Calligraphy and Wine! 

Join us on February 17th at Contemporary Calgary to explore the composition of Chinese characters and their underlying philosophies. Instructors will be on hand to guide your creative journey as you learn about beautiful Chinese calligraphy. Of course, no evening would be complete without a glass of wine to help fuel the conversation with your friends!

We will explore 5 major Chinese calligraphy styles to write "福“(blessing) and learn how to draw 兔 (rabbits) in ink. Finally, we will write 福兔on nice presentation papers, so that you can start the new year with love and good luck. 

Don’t miss this opportunity to explore the art of Chinese calligraphy in a peaceful and relaxing setting. We look forward to seeing you there!  

For adults ages 18+.
Workshop supplies will be provided.
Beverages will be available for purchase at our cash bar.

INVOLVE: Stonewall & Carousel

Thursday, February 16th | 7:00PM

Join us for an evening of discussion with New York Stonewall Uprising Activist, Martin Boyce, and local Club Carousel founder, Lois Szabo.

Get INVOLVED as they share their perspective and experiences on civil rights and liberation movements.

Doors open at 7:00 pm with a cash bar.

The program begins at 7:30 pm.  A Q&A period will follow the program, along with a door prize raffle.

As part of this event, Lawrence Interior Design Studio Inc. will be making a donation to both non-profit groups to thank our speakers for sharing their experiences. We encourage our attendees to consider making a donation to either one of these groups in support of the great ongoing work they do.

Martin Boyce Donations: https://www.dayofpink.org/en/donate

Lois Szabo Donation: https://www.skippingstone.ca/donate

Partners: Lawrence Interior Design Studio Inc., International Day of Pink & Calgary Gay History Project  

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

DIY Comic ZINE Workshop

Sunday, January 29th | 10:00-11:30 AM

We’re going to plan, fold and draw ourselves the perfect mini-zines for at-home publication! While we’re making those, we’ll also be exploring questions that the medium inspires, like: how will we look at comics in the future? We’ll learn how to graph a story, where to place text, and what kinds of character designs are easily ‘read’ in a story.

This workshop is presented in conjunction with the Chitra Ganesh: Astral Dance exhibition.

For ages 12+
Non-members: $20 /person
Members: $10 /person
Maximum capacity: 35 persons

Workshop supplies will be provided.

About the facilitator,
Shea Proulx (she/her)

Shea Proulx has a BFA from Emily Carr and an MFA from The University of British Columbia. Her published books, Alice at Naptime and ABC Monstrosity, were both short-listed for the Best Illustrated Children’s Book category by the Alberta Book Publisher’s Association. Shea is a co-editor for Home, the first volume of the Alberta Comics Anthology, and Vice-President on the board of directors for a comic-creator festival called Panel One. Last year Shea was the proud recipient of a Canada Council grant in support of a series of paintings that feature surreal versions of environments she drew while sort-of also somehow supervising her children.

About the artist,
Chitra Ganesh (she/her)

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA) received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. 

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India. 

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including solo shows at Brooklyn Museum, NY,USA; MoMA PS1, NY, USA; The Kitchen, NY, USA; The Rubin Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA, USA; Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden; and Times Square, NY,USA. Her work has also been exhibited in important group exhibitions at The Walker Art Center, MN, USA; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, USA; The Queens Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Asia Society, NY, USA; The Bronx Museum, NY, USA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, USA; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, USA; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, LA, USA; the Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Museum, London, UK: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Italy; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany; Göteborgs Konsthall, Germany; Arthotek Kunstverein, Göttingen, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; the Gwangju Contemporary Arts Centre, Korea; the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, India; Indira Ghandi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, India; Devi Art Foundation, India; the Kochi Biennial, India; the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh among others.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, among others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; Printed Matter; the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors; and the Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Flipbook Animation Workshop

Saturday, January 28th | 8:00-9:30 PM

We’re spending the evening watching Chitra Ganesh’s animations, while also testing our own skills as animators through doodling, and flip book making.

We’ll be asking ourselves some important questions: Whether things that appear in sequence always tell a story? How do we create mystery in our work? What can we gain by adding animated elements to two-dimensional work? And who here remembers Spy vs. Spy?

This workshop is presented in conjunction with the Chitra Ganesh: Astral Dance exhibition.

For adults ages 18+
Non-members: $20 /person
Members: $10 /person
Maximum capacity: 35 persons

Workshop supplies will be provided and also popcorn!

Beverages will be available for purchase at our cash bar.

About the facilitator,
Shea Proulx (she/her)

Shea Proulx has a BFA from Emily Carr and an MFA from The University of British Columbia. Her published books, Alice at Naptime and ABC Monstrosity, were both short-listed for the Best Illustrated Children’s Book category by the Alberta Book Publisher’s Association. Shea is a co-editor for Home, the first volume of the Alberta Comics Anthology, and Vice-President on the board of directors for a comic-creator festival called Panel One. Last year Shea was the proud recipient of a Canada Council grant in support of a series of paintings that feature surreal versions of environments she drew while sort-of also somehow supervising her children.

About the artist,
Chitra Ganesh (she/her)

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA) received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2001 and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. 

Across a twenty-year practice, Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India. 

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including solo shows at Brooklyn Museum, NY,USA; MoMA PS1, NY, USA; The Kitchen, NY, USA; The Rubin Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA, USA; Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden; and Times Square, NY,USA. Her work has also been exhibited in important group exhibitions at The Walker Art Center, MN, USA; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, USA; The Queens Museum of Art, NY, USA; The Asia Society, NY, USA; The Bronx Museum, NY, USA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, USA; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, USA; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, LA, USA; the Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Museum, London, UK: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Italy; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Germany; Göteborgs Konsthall, Germany; Arthotek Kunstverein, Göttingen, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; the Gwangju Contemporary Arts Centre, Korea; the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, India; Indira Ghandi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, India; Devi Art Foundation, India; the Kochi Biennial, India; the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh among others.

Ganesh’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, among others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; Printed Matter; the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Creative Arts; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters and Sculptors; and the Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Telling Our Family Stories Through Art - 55+ ZINE Workshop

Thursdays, January 26 - February 23

Participants will share their family stories through Zines that incorporate collage, photography and drawing.  (Zines are self-published magazines that are usually reproduced with a photocopier). Contemporary Calgary exhibitions Human Capital and Astral Dance will be used as resources to support generating ideas and approaches to using the materials. This program will be held at Contemporary Calgary, across the street from the Kerby Centre.

For adults age 55+

Facilitated by: Gail Hinchliffe, MFA candidate, UCalgary
Location: Contemporary Calgary
Registration Fee: $60 + tax

Agenda:

January 26: Orientation & Introduction / 2-4 PM

• Getting to know each other, an introduction to the project: Zines, and an introduction to the Chitra Ganesh: Astral Dance & Human Capital Exhibitions.

February 2: Collage / 2-4 PM

• Participants will create backgrounds for Zine pages, using Chitra Ganesh: Astral Dance as a reference for approaches. In this session, you will plan the composition of your Zine, including photos, drawn elements and text.

• Please bring: textured/patterned papers, magazine pics, etc that you might want to use to develop the backgrounds of your Zine’s pages. Instructor will bring additional papers, etc. to supplement materials that participants are able to bring.

February 9: Photography / 2-4 PM

• In this session, participants will take photos of original pictures that they would like to use in their zines (e.g. pictures of parents/grandparents, recipes in their original form, artworks in the home, pictures of their childhood home, pictures of their first home in a new country, etc.). 

• Participants will have the opportunity to learn how to edit these pictures on their phones. Final images will then be submitted to the instructor via email. 

February 16: Drawing / 2-4 PM

• In this session, participants will add photos from the previous session to their Zine and begin to include drawn elements and text. Upon completion, they will learn how to connect the pages together.

February 23: Exhibition Opening / 2-4 PM

• Participants are invited to bring guests to the Exhibition Opening where they can view Zines completed during this workshop.

• There will be light refreshments provided by the Kerby Centre café.

This program is part of the YYC/LRT: Community-Based Art as Community Development study. Those attending this event may choose to participate in a study exploring the role of art in community development. This would involve completing a questionnaire and including your art as data in the study. The Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board has approved this study (REB22-1227). For more information please email jreiserm@ucalgary.ca.

SOLD OUT!

Nura Ali: Gel Transfer Printing Workshop

Working with the concept of Dreaming

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Join us on Thursday, November 3rd for a hands-on art experience with Nura Ali during our all-ages, family-focused FREE First Thursdays! This print transfer workshop utilizes ink and language as participants explore how we make meaning, with a focus on how our brain works to make meaning out of language.

This Workshop is FREE and appropriate for all ages. It can be messy, so please dress appropriately.

Drop in during FREE First Thursdays November 3rd between 6-8 pm for an opportunity to sit in on this SOLD-OUT Workshop. Pre-registration is currently full.

About the Artist

Nura Ali aims to create an awareness of how we are not users of language but shapers of it. This is done by thinking of translation as a way to understand that meaning is not fixed, but a reflection of the relationship between sensory input and ourselves as interpreters About Nura Nura Ali is a visual artist, writer and curator, living and working in Calgary, Alberta. She received a BFA in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, a BA in English Literature, Art History and Italian from the University of Leicester and a BA in History from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her wide-ranging practice investigates the linguistic scaffolding upholding the assumptions we bring to the act of reading and writing. Alongside her visual arts practice, Nura is also a prolific writer, a lifelong learner and has participated in various national and international residencies. Her work has been shown nationally and received numerous awards and grants; most recently from the Calgary Arts Development, the Rozsa Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. When she is not curled up with a book or puttering around her garden, Nura is dreaming up ways to dismantle oppressive structures and for this reason, became one of the founding members of the Vancouver Artists Labour Union; a unionised workers cooperative whose mission it is to transform labour practises in the arts sector and create fair, equitable and sustainable working conditions for artists and cultural workers.

Isn’t the Fibre Universe Wonderful!

Free Fibre Workshop for Alberta Culture Days

This is an in-person program. Masks are mandatory and will be made available at our welcome desk. Physical distancing will be maintained in seating arrangements.

This easy-to-understand fibre workshop facilitated by artists Richard Boulet and Marilyn Olson, focusses on a playful and stress-free attitude to material exploration. Participants receive a variety of easy-to-handle fibre-related materials and are guided on creating their own artwork. Once you’ve registered you can decide on your time of arrival, and how long you wish to stay.

Participants can also bring their own materials to use themselves and/or share. Think of ribbons and bows, buttons and beads, a favourite scrap of fabric, a sentimental small object, a rather eccentric looking yarn or two: the list is endless. The word “concoction” comes to mind: and let us not forget the word “joy”. Isn’t the fibre universe wonderful!

Funded by Alberta Culture Days, this workshop is produced by SITE c PROJECTS, the creative arm of OBAD (Organization for Bipolar Affective Disorders). Also in attendance at the workshop will be OBAD Executive Director Kaj Korvela, SITE c PROJECTS founder Anthony Preston, and curator Dick Averns.

Workshop participants are welcome to bring their own snacks, food and beverages: there is no food or drink vending on site. This is an in-person program. Masks are mandatory encouraged and will be made available at our welcome desk. Physical distancing will be maintained in seating arrangements, and Contemporary Calgary will maintain a vigorous cleaning schedule.

Richard Boulet and Marilyn Olson will be exhibiting later in the fall at Contemporary Calgary in Perspectives From Within, curated through SITE c PROJECTS by Dick Averns. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Workshop Facilitators Introduce Themselves…

Omar Ba’s work engages with some of the most urgent issues of our time: the growing inequality of wealth and power globally, forced migration and our changing relationship with the natural world. His penchant for depicting personal narratives alongside collective ones speaks to the in-between condition of his work, as he splits his time between Dakar, Senegal and Geneva, Switzerland, and blends the visual texture of both places through his practice. Ba draws from and intertwines a range of elements— the historical and contemporary, figurative and abstract imagery—from African and European cultures.

Same Dream brings together several of Ba’s paintings depicting dictators and authority figures, who lead corrupt and violent regimes across the African continent and in other parts of the world, particularly where the legacies of colonialism persist.

Additional Resources

Watch Omar Ba Studio Tour and Artist Talk, in conversation with Justine Kohleal

This creative leadership workshop is a collaboration between: