Workshop

Australian artist Keg de Souza will be working from a temporary studio in Chinatown as part of the final phase of her eighteen month residency in Vancouver. Developing on from a series of public participatory events examining food culture as a metaphor for urban displacement, for The Big Draw the artist will conduct an exploratory food mapping project of the Strathcona neighbourhood by inviting people to become urban cartographers and contribute to a large-scale collaborative map considering local shops, restaurants, urban farms and our interconnected relationships/experiences to them.

Presented as part of The Big Draw, the world’s largest drawing festival and Culture Days, a Canada-wide celebration that raises the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities.

As our contribution to this city-wide one day drawing festival, CAG will present Walking a Line, a series of collaborative drawing experiences for all ages created by students as part of Community, Collaboration and Pedagogy, a studio course with Emily Carr University of Art + Design, hosted by CAG.

Biography

Australian artist de Souza investigates the politics of space informed through a formal training in architecture combined with her experiences such as squatting in Redfern, Sydney. De Souza’s work emphasises participation and reciprocity, and often involves the process of learning new skills and fostering relationships to create site and situation-specific projects. For over ten years she has self-published her hand-bound books and ‘zines under the name All Thumbs Press. Recent exhibitions include; Redfern School of Displacement for the 20th Biennale of Sydney; Abundance: Fruit of the Sea, Bounty of the Mountains for the 2016 Setouchi Triennale (2016). Temporary Spaces, Edible Places: Vancouver and Preservation, Contemporary Art Gallery; Temporary Spaces, Edible Places: New York, AC Institute, New York (2015). Temporarily in Architecture, Food and Communities, Delfina Foundation, London; Temporary Spaces, Edible Places, Atlas Arts, Isle of Skye, Scotland; If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood … Ratmakan Kampung, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2014). The 5th Auckland Triennial, 15th Jakarta Biennale and Vertical Villages at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2013).