ALTHEA THAUBERGER | THE STATE OF THE SITUATION | BOOK LAUNCH | VIRTUAL
December 12 | 11 AM - 1 PM | FREE
with artist Althea Thauberger, and authors Jan-Erik Lundström, Melanie O Brian, Kimberly Phillips, Zarmeene Shah
In partnership with the Contemporary Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
The SAAG is pleased to host an online launch of Althea Thauberger’s new publication, THE STATE OF THE SITUATION, co-hosted by the Contemporary Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Please join us over zoom for a conversation with the artist and authors of the publication.
Articulations Art Lecture Series offers presentations from contemporary practicing artists and arts professionals. Local and international artists, curators, critics, art historians, theorists, filmmakers, and more, join us in discussion online, sharing their practice and engaging with the audience in open, critical discussion.
ALTHEA THAUBERGER is a Vancouver-based artist and filmmaker whose practice incorporates collaborative research and performative processes in social documentary. Her projects typically involve sustained engagements with communities associated with the sites of their production. These have included the Capri Cinema in Karachi; the Bohnice Psychiatric Hosptial in Prague; the Kandahar International Airport at the Kandahar Airfield, southern Afghanistan; the 200 block of Carrall Street in Vancouver; the Chelsea Apartments in Victoria, Canada; the Haskell Opera House on the Québec/Vermont border; and the former Rikard Benčić factory in Rijeka, Croatia. Thauberger’s exhibitions and screenings venues have included the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, UBC, Vancouver; the Audain Gallery, Vancouver; the National Gallery of Canada; the 2012 Liverpool Biennial; The Power Plant, Toronto; La Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; Prádelna, Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital, Prague; the occupied Kino Zvezda, Belgrade; the Guangong Museum of Art, Guangzhou; and the Kadist Foundation, San Fransico. She is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia.
JAN-ERIK LUNDSTROM is a curator, critic and historian of contemporary art and visual culture. He is the former director of the Sami Center of Contemporary Art, Kárášjohka, Norway, Bildmuseet, Umeå, and of Fotografiska museet, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the chairman of the Paletten Art journal and of Skogen Art Space, and the former chairman of the Centre for Photography in Stockholm. Among his curatorial projects are Show Colour: Resist, Stand Up, Advocate, Fall Back Spring Forward, Surviving the Future, The Map: Critical Cartographies, Politics of Place, Carlos Capelán: Only You and Society Must Be Defended (1st Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art). He was the chief curator of Berlin Photography Festival and the artistic director of the 3rd Bucharest Biennale. He is the author and editor of many books, including Thinking Photography – Using Photography, Contemporary Sami Art and Design, Britta Marakatt-Labba: Embroidered Stories, Nordic Landscapes, Ursula Biemann: Mission Reports, and Irving Penn: Photographs, and he has published in journals such as Afterimage, Afterall, EIKON, European Photography, Glänta, Kunstpluss, and Tema Celeste. Lundström has contributed to major publications such as Horizons: Towards a Global Africa, The Oxford Companion to the Photograph and The History of European Photography of the 20th Century. Lundström has been a guest lecturer at, among others, Alvar Aalto University, Helsinki, Konstfackskolan and the Royal Art Academy, Stockholm, Malmö Art Academy, HISK, Antwerpen/Gent, Tarttu Art Academy, Estonia, Universidad de los Ándes, Bogotá, and Oslo Art Academy.
MELANIE O’BRIAN is a curator and writer living on the unceded territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. She has organized exhibitions and offsite projects nationally and internationally that include the work of artists such as Richard Ibghy/Marilou Lemmens, Marianne Nicolson, Walid Raad, Hito Steyerl, and Althea Thauberger. She was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Galleries in Vancouver (2012-2020), Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (2011-2012), Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver (2004-2011), and Assistant Curator at Vancouver Art Gallery (2001-2004). She is the editor of $5 Handshake: Art on Treaty 8 Territory (SFU Galleries, 2018), Omer Fast: 5,000 Feet is the Best (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter/The Power Plant/Sternberg, 2012) with Milena Hoegsberg; Stan Douglas: Entertainment (The Power Plant, 2011); Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism (Artspeak/Fillip, 2010) with Jeff Khonsary; Vancouver Art and Economies (Arsenal Pulp Press/Artspeak, 2007), and has written for catalogues and magazines including Fillip, The Exhibitionist, Yishu and C. She occasionally teaches at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University.
KIMBERLY PHILLIPS is Director of SFU Galleries at Simon Fraser University. Over the past 15 years, in her roles as gallery director, curator, and teacher based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh peoples, she has worked to amplify the voices of underacknowledged artists and practitioners, ethically vision and build organizational capacity, and create meaningful and unexpected ways for contemporary artists and their publics to find one another. From 2017-2020 she held the position of Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, overseeing the gallery’s exhibitions, publications and artist residencies. Previous to this she served as Director/Curator of Access Gallery (2013-2017), a Vancouver artist-run centre committed to emergent and experimental practices. Phillips holds a PhD in art history from the University of British Columbia (2007), where she was an Izaak Walton Killam Doctoral Fellow. Phillips’ curatorial practice maintains a particular interest in the spectral and the resistant, as well as the conditions under which artists work. She has curated over 50 projects, including including solo exhibitions for Madiha Aijaz, Deanna Bowen, Aslan Gaisumov, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Ingrid Koenig, Lyse Lemieux, Cindy Mochizuki, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Laura Piasta, Birthe Piontek, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Rolande Souliere and Olivia Whetung, among others. She maintains an active teaching practice, looks to steward opportunities for learners to inhabit the gallery as a place of open inquiry, and has instructed courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels in visual culture at the University of British Columbia and Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she was awarded the Ian Wallace Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015.
ZARMEENE SHAH is an academic, and an independent curator and writer currently based in Karachi, Pakistan. Focusing on global contemporary art with specialist knowledge of the Global South, Shah’s research-based practice investigates ideas of power and control, geography and territory, rights and access. With an MA in Critical & Curatorial Studies from Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar in 2010, Shah became one of Pakistan’s first professionally qualified curators. She has curated and been involved in the production of several notable and often large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art institutionally and independently, including The Rising Tide: New Directions in Art From Pakistan (2010), the 4th Cairo Video Festival (2011), the politically focused Parrhesia I & II shows (2011 & 2015), the Karachi Biennale (2017), Althea Thauberger’s Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Dunya (2017), and Madiha Aijaz’s Memorial for the Lost Pages at CAG Vancouver (2020). She has been Consultant for South Asian Art for CCA Derry-Londonderry (Northern Ireland), Assistant Director/Curator at the Mohatta Palace Museum (Karachi), and Curator-at-Large of the inaugural Karachi Biennale (KB17).
Shah is one of the country’s foremost writers on contemporary art, with a host of contributions in magazines, journals, catalogues, books and monographs. She is currently Associate Professor and Head of the Liberal Arts program at the IVS, where she is hailed for her radical vision and transformation of the program.
This event is hosted online over zoom. Guests will receive a 20% discount on the book (regular price $40). Please email info@saag.ca to inquire about purchasing the publication.