Althea Thauberger

Each season, CAG releases a series of Video Visits that offer short takes on our exhibitions. Presented in five languages — English, French, Mandarin, Spanish and Urdu — these videos present a variety of perspectives on the work of Madiha Aijaz, Althea Thauberger, and Julian Yi-Zhong Hou.

### English Video Visits
[Madiha Aijaz: Memorial for the lost pages](https://vimeo.com/454176959)
[Althea Thauberger: Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya](https://vimeo.com/454174583)
[Julian Yi-Zhong Hou: Grass Drama](https://vimeo.com/454827760)

### Urdu Video Visits
[Madiha Aijaz: Memorial for the lost pages](https://vimeo.com/451275065)
[Althea Thauberger: Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya](https://vimeo.com/451271843)
[Julian Yi-Zhong Hou: Grass Drama](https://vimeo.com/451272233)

### Visites vidéo en français
[Madiha Aijaz: Memorial for the lost pages](https://vimeo.com/451234395)
[Althea Thauberger: Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya](https://vimeo.com/451228039)
[Julian Yi-Zhong Hou: Grass Drama](https://vimeo.com/451231420)

### Visitas de video en español
[Madiha Aijaz: Memorial for the lost pages](https://vimeo.com/451269047)
[Althea Thauberger: Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya](https://vimeo.com/451263446)
[Julian Yi-Zhong Hou: Grass Drama](https://vimeo.com/451266649)

### 普通话视频之旅
[Madiha Aijaz: Memorial for the lost pages](https://vimeo.com/451262875)
[Althea Thauberger: Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya](https://vimeo.com/451259370)
[Julian Yi-Zhong Hou: Grass Drama](https://vimeo.com/451260202)


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Screenshot 2022-05-27 133300.png

Summer 2020

Video Visits

In partnership with the [Art Gallery of Nova Scotia](https://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/) and [Southern Alberta Art Gallery](https://www.saag.ca/), CAG is pleased to host an online launch for Althea Thauberger’s new publication, *The State of the Situation*. Please join us over Zoom for a conversation with the artist and all four contributors to the publication: Jan-Erik Lundström, Melanie O’Brian, Kimberly Phillips and Zarmeene Shah.

Through photography, film, video and performance, Althea Thauberger’s art practice is primarily concerned with the collaborative possibilities of the social documentary form. Her recent projects involve an extended engagement with the sites of their production in order to trace broader social and ideological histories. These sites include the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic; the former Rikard Benčić Factory in Rijeka, Croatia; the image holdings of the former National Film Board Still Image Division, now at the National Gallery of Canada; and the Capri Cinema in Saddar, Karachi, Pakistan. Her screenings and exhibitions include the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2019); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2018); Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (2018); the inaugural Karachi Biennale (2017); the 2012 Liverpool Biennale; the 17th Biennale of Sydney; La musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); The Power Plant, Toronto (2012); Manifesta 7 (2008); The Berkeley Art Museum (2007); BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht (2007), among many others. Thauberger is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto.

### Biographies 

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 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,  among others.

Melanie O’Brian is a curator and writer living on the unceded territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwəta 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 səl̓ílwəta /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.

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).


A cover of Althea Thauberger's book, titled The State of the Situation. It is black and has various quotes written in white.

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Althea Thauberger: The State of the Situation 

Publication Launch 

Presented in partnership with [Art Toronto](https://arttoronto.balluun.com/en-us/widget-detail/329), this panel discussion brings together an intergenerational group of Vancouver-based artists to discuss their histories with community and collaborative practices, the circumstances that brought them to the city, and their current projects in a time of distancing. Moderated by Althea Thauberger, this conversation includes Justine A. Chambers, Yasmine Haiboub, Sandra Semchuk, and Charlene Vickers.

### Watch Online

Watch the panel discussion for free online [here](https://vimeo.com/471945599/1a0beeb71b)

### Biographies 

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. In her work she privileges what is felt over what is seen, by working with her body as an imperfect recording device to develop a cumulative embodied archive. Recent choreographic projects have been presented at Contemporary Art Gallery (2020), Sophiensaele (2019), Artspeak (2019), Hong Kong Arts Festival (2019), Art Museum at University of Toronto (2018), the Vancouver Art Gallery (2018), Agora de la Danse (2017), Festival of New Dance (2017), Canada Dance Festival (2016), Dancing on the Edge (2015), Dance in Vancouver (2013, 2015, 2019), and The Western Front (2013). Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

Yasmine Haiboub is an artist, facilitator and curator currently based in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is completing her BFA at Emily Carr University, where she received an Award for Community Engagement. She also co-founded Ground Floor Art Centre. Yasmine’s practice is interdisciplinary and focuses on community engagement and sculptural works. She engages with her immediate surroundings through performative gestures, interactive sculptures and mass accumulation of familiar objects, creating new narratives in public and private spaces. Yasmine is mainly concerned with creating intersectionality through self-awareness, care, hospitality, and self-proclaimed authority.

Sandra Semchuk is a photographer, writer and Governor General’s Award recipient in Visual and Media Arts. She is a storyteller who uses the familial, autobiography and dialogue as the basis for recognition and identity across generations, cultures and species. She collaborated with her late husband James Nicholas, Rock Cree writer and orator to disrupt myths that have shaped settler relations to First Nations. Her book, *The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps* (U of Alberta Press, 2018) considers legislated racism and the intergenerational consequences of Canada’s first internment camps when so many from the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman Empires were interned.

Althea Thauberger is an artist, filmmaker and educator known for place-based social documentary projects involving collaborative research and production. The final works — films, videos, audio recordings, and photographs — are reflections on local histories and sociopolitical power dynamics, including ones involved in the production process itself. Thauberger currently has a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, and has recently shown her work at the Art Gallery of Southern Alberta in Lethbridge, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Charlene Vickers is an Anishnabe artist based in Vancouver. Her painting, sculpture and performance works explore memory, healing and embodied connections to ancestral lands. Charlene is the recipient of the 2018 VIVA Award. Recent solo exhibitions include SFU Galleries (2018), aceartinc (2017) and Artspeak (2015), with a forthcoming solo project at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. Recent group exhibitions include Portland Art Museum (2019); Oakville Galleries (2018); Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2018); Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe (2017); Pataka Art Museum, New Zealand (2016); and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2016). She graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1994) and Simon Fraser University (BA, 1998; MFA, 2013).

### Relevant links

Justine A. Chambers and Laurie Young, One Hundred More
[tanzforumberlin.de/en/production/one-hundred-more/](https://www.tanzforumberlin.de/en/production/one-hundred-more/)

Ground Floor Art Centre, co-founded by Yasmine Haiboub
[groundfloorac.info/about](http://groundfloorac.info/about)

Portrait of Sandra Semchuk
[youtube.com/watch?v=OWK_4kNb-cE](
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OWK_4kNb-cE)

Sandra Semchuk and James Nicholas, Taking off Skins 
[themedicineproject.com/sandra-semchuk-james-nicholas.html](http://themedicineproject.com/sandra-semchuk-james-nicholas.html)

Charlene Vickers and Neil Eustache, Cool Indians on Main Street
[grunt.ca/cool-indians-on-main-street](http://grunt.ca/cool-indians-on-main-street/)

Charlene Vickers and Marian Hupfield,  Jingles and Sounds for Speaking to Our Grandmothers
[mariahupfield.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/massive-jingle-seattle-art-fair](http://mariahupfield.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/massive-jingle-seattle-art-fair)


Working together apart: Collaborative practices in Vancouver

Talk 

The Capri Theatre of Karachi, Pakistan is the site and subject of Althea Thauberger’s video work, *Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya [Mad Mad Mad Mad Filmy World]* (2017). Thauberger recognized a complex knot of histories, social relations and power dynamics in the Capri. Built in 1968, the theatre embodied Pakistan’s “golden age” of cinema, and through the late 1970s and 1980s, withstood religious and political shifts decrying the “deviance” of the movies. Today, with an accessible 200-rupee ticket price in the lower seats, the theatre remains open to almost anyone who desires to see a film. Thauberger’s methodology involves developing projects through a process of engagement with the communities of her chosen sites. For *Pagal*, she worked collaboratively and experimentally with a large group of participant-actors who shaped the film for themselves, imaginatively describing a world in the cinema, created by the unruly, heterogenous group of people that make up its audience. *Pagal* asks us to think differently about the complexity of space and invites us to consider the tenuousness of any community. 

Curated by Kimberly Phillips, with assistance from Julia Lamare

This exhibition is presented in partnership with Capture Photography Festival, with additional support from Clark’s Audio Visual.

*Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya* is coproduced by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; Musagetes, Guelph; and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, with additional support from the Karachi Biennale, Shanitha Kachan and Gerald Sheff, Ann and Harry Malcolmson, Carol Weinbaum and Carlos Yep.


### Biography

Through photography, film, video and performance, Althea Thauberger’s art practice is primarily concerned with the collaborative possibilities of the social documentary form. Her recent projects involve an extended engagement with the sites of their production in order to trace broader social and ideological histories. These sites include the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic; the former Rikard Benčić Factory in Rijeka, Croatia; the image holdings of the former National Film Board Still Image Division, now at the National Gallery of Canada; and the Capri Cinema in Saddar, Karachi, Pakistan. Her screenings and exhibitions include the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2019); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2018); Polygon Gallery, Vancouver (2018); the inaugural Karachi Biennale (2017); the 2012 Liverpool Biennale; the 17th Biennale of Sydney; La musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); The Power Plant, Toronto (2012); Manifesta 7 (2008); The Berkeley Art Museum (2007); BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2007), among many others. Thauberger is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto.



ProgramGuideSummer2020.pdf

ExhibitionGuideAltheaThauberger.pdf

A black and white image of 7 people standing on the steps and landings of a u-shaped staircase inside of a building. Each person is looking directly at the camera. 

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Wooden bleachers with three levels, face towards a large projector screen. The screen shows an image of a stage with big red curtains. A person stands in the middle of the stage with a spotlight. 

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Wooden bleachers with three levels, face towards a large projector screen in a dimly lit gallery. The screen shows an image of children sitting in a room. 

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Wooden bleachers pointed towards a large projector screen in a dimly lit gallery. The screen shows a close up image of a person's face with subtitles below.

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An angled view of a projector screen showing an image of a group of people standing, one is holding a phone. The subtitles read: “You get attached. There are somethings people just get attached to.”

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Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Duniya

*Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas* brings together a variety of works by five Vancouver-based artists whose creative methods "show" violence, implicate danger or threaten retribution.

In the entrance foyer, Althea Thauberger's large photo-laminate poster depicts a young woman. This woman is the subject of Thauberger's *not afraid to die*, a single-channel video at the entrance to the B.C. Binning Gallery. The video was shot in front of a diorama inside BC's Provincial Museum in Victoria, and the soundtrack includes a song sung by the artist. Also in the B.C. Binning Gallery, Michelle Normoyle's ongoing series of photographs, *After Play*, document the chaos of her child's room after play with her toys. Peter Lojewski's occupation as a licensed practical nurse provides subjects for a series of roughly drawn but eloquent paintings depicting hospital wards. Other works invoke revenge fantasies against disparate mythic and historic figures, personal portraits and ruminations on environmental issues.

Pasted to the exterior of the gallery's windows, as well as on hoardings and poster boards around the city, are posters by Alex Morrison. *Patterer's Diary* is a two -part work that features a selection of short autobiographical incidents recalled in the first person past tense, accompanied by a third-person gloss on the events narrated in the poster, which can be seen in the B.C. Binning Gallery.

In the Alvin Balkind Gallery Kevin Schmidt's *Long Beach Led Zep* is a ten minute video featuring the artist playing the song "Stairway to Heaven” on an electric guitar while standing on Vancouver Island's Long Beach. As the palindromic title suggests, *Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas* draws parallels between depictions and suggestions of violence, and the impulses of mastery and aesthetic delight with which they often coexist or stem from. By expanding on these themes, the exhibition focuses on aestheticizing depictions in acts of control, catharsis and elegy.

A series of framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall behind the sculpture. The sculpture depicts a white apartment building, on which a blue helicopter is landing. 

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Twelve framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall behind a sculpture. The sculpture depicts a white apartment building, on which a blue helicopter is landing.  

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Texts printed on sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. Some papers are much larger than the others. They are pink, yellow, blue, green, or white.

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Many sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. Some papers are much larger than the others. They are pink, yellow, blue, green, or white.

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Ten coloured photographs are mounted on the gallery wall. Many of those images depict colourful objects piled up in a room. This room has a white floor and a pink wall.

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Many sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. They are illuminated at night. Blue, yellow, and green colours are visible from afar. 

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A CRT TV is placed on a pedestal installed in the middle of the gallery space. The video played on the TV shows abstract shapes. Some paintings mounted on the wall are visible behind the TV.

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This photograph shows a facade of a building that stands by a street. The building is orange and many fliers are attached to the surface of this building. A bear tree stands in front of the building. 

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A single-channel video is projected on the wall inside a darkened gallery space. The video depicts a person playing a guitar on a seashore. The blue ocean is visible behind the person. 

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This photograph documents the entrance of the exhibition titled Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. A photograph of a woman standing in a forest is installed below the exhibition title. 

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Althea Thauberger, Kevin Schmidt, Michelle Normoyle, Peter Lojewski, Alex Morrison

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas

The State of the Situation features images and writing on Vancouver-based artist Althea Thauberger’s multi-venue examination of her work in 2019 and 2020. This publication features essays and texts by Kimberly Phillips, Melanie O’Brian, Jan-Erik Lundström, Zarmeene Shah, Matthew Hyland, Nancy Noble, and Kristy Trinier.

Thauberger’s projects involve sustained engagements with communities associated with the sites of their production. These have included the Capri Cinema (Karachi), the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital (Prague)  the Kandahar International Airport at the Kandahar Airfield, (Southern Afghanistan), and the 200 block of Carrall Street (Vancouver, BC) amongst others. 



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AltheaThauberger_Cover.jpg

The State of the Situation

*Public 28* is a journal of contemporary cultural issues co-published in 2002 by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Public Access, Toronto to accompany the group exhibition *Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas* at CAG November 15, 2002 – January 5, 2003.

This issue, *Public #28: Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas* is edited by Reid Shier and William Wood. The journal includes a CD along with contributions from Rodney Graham, Phillip McCrum, Althea Thauberger, Michael Turner, Geoffrey Farmer, Marina Roy, Michael Euyung Oh, William Wood, Ron Terada, Steven Shearer, Kevin Schmidt, Peter Culley, Reid Shier, Peter Mahovsky, Peter Hudson, Neil Wedman, Amy Pederson.

Althea Thauberger

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