Spaces in Between: Book Launch Reading & Exhibition Sunday Dec 14th 8pm

Queen of the Nomads

Zofia Kiefer & Edward McCann

The book, Queen of the NOMADS, is a memoir of love, lust and injustice right here in "the best place on earth". Zofia Kiefer recounts how she fell from the pampered life of a wife of a hotelman to living in Vancouver's tent 'city' where Edward McCann photographed her. Zofia will read from her text. Edward McCann will also be present.





Rooted B-Tween Cracks


Jocelyne Robinson

Ph: Day/Evening -604-215-1552 Algonkian@shaw.ca
Website: www.jocelynerobinson.com






ARTIST BIO

I am Algonquin from the Algonquin First Nations of Quebec. I hold a bachelor’s degree in fine arts (BFA) from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver B.C., a Masters Degree in education with Simon Fraser University and I am currently working on a Ph.D in Education at UBC. I have worked nationally and internationally as a sculptor and performance artist. Nationally I was a finalist one of Canada’s largest First Nation’s Public art completion for the University of Regina. My work was one of 24 artists featured in the in “Sculpture” magazine along with 24 international artists participating in the Bellevue Washington Biennale Outdoor Exhibition. In 2007 my work was chosen as the first Canadian to mount a permanent sculpture in Tong Ji Shanghai. The sculpture is a 12 foot stainless steel and copper piece called Dancing to the Songs of the Universe.

One of my latest endeavors is the creation of a book called ‘Rooted b-Tween Cracks which is a visual narrative of my lived experience growing up in Quebec and living on the Drive in Vancouver. B.C. The book takes up the topics of place, language time and self as a place that is constantly negotiating those spaces rooted in b-tween. The book was created as a field note exercise during my studies in a course called ‘living inquiry’ and the silver mylar dress was created as a response to a course called ‘narrative inquiry’. The two dress sculptures (Industrial Dress & Pedagogical Ad/Dress) and the book (Rooted B-tween Cracks) are being shown together as a visual narrative of my experience as an Algonquin woman living in Canada. Many of my other works have included recycled materials such as sawdust and wood products. The Pedagogical ad/ dress sculpture is made from silver mylar,a material left over during the food packaging process. The pedagogical ad/dress represents a metaphor for the self as an inhabited space holding an address that is never quite complete and always being added to. The word ad dress alludes to many connotations such as the masked or private self that carries a particular knowledge that is based on the past experiences and is in constant negotiation with the present day narratives taking place. I was inspired by the writing by (Groz & Eisenman, 2000) who considered that architecture like shelter or clothing is a measure of reality’s incompleteness. The Industrial Dress sculpture is made of sawdust, rope and wire and commemorates my parents who were both Algonquin. My mother was a seamstress and my father was a logging journeyman and foreman working for the paper and pulp industry.


Rooted B-Tween Cracks
rooted B-tween cracks a living inquiry grows
on a street, on a stair, on a sidewalk just below
what you are or where you came from no-one knows
trace a unit thought in green, yellow, and red … then let it go!
Jocelyne V, McKenzie Robinson