Nicole Kelly Westman

Christine Howard Sandoval

Each season, CAG releases a series of Video Visits that offer short takes on our exhibitions. Presented in five languages — Cantonese, English, French, Mandarin and Spanish — these videos present a variety of perspectives on the work of Nicole Kelly Westman and Christine Howard Sandoval.
 
### English Video Visits
[Nicole Kelly Westman: muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation](https://vimeo.com/519181266)
[Christine Howard Sandoval: A wall is a shadow on the land](https://vimeo.com/519180839)
 
### Visites vidéo en français
[Nicole Kelly Westman: muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation](https://vimeo.com/518298227)
[Christine Howard Sandoval: A wall is a shadow on the land](https://vimeo.com/518298159)
 
### Visitas de video en español
[Nicole Kelly Westman: muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation](https://vimeo.com/518246658)
[Christine Howard Sandoval: A wall is a shadow on the land](https://vimeo.com/518246403)
 
### 普通话视频之旅
[Nicole Kelly Westman: muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation](https://vimeo.com/518389750)
[Christine Howard Sandoval: A wall is a shadow on the land](https://vimeo.com/518389702)
 
### 粵語視頻參觀
[Nicole Kelly Westman: muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation](https://vimeo.com/518364153)
[Christine Howard Sandoval: A wall is a shadow on the land](https://vimeo.com/518364087)

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Screenshot 2022-05-27 125035.png

Spring 2021

Video Visits

The practice of Nicole Kelly Westman is anchored in an ongoing concern with the conditions of image-making. Although Westman only occasionally uses cameras or produces anything akin to a photograph, her work deftly engages the tools, techniques and principles of photography to question the objectivity of the recorded moment. 

Light, in particular, is an essential collaborator for Westman. The glow of a sunbeam filtered through treetops; a city street at night, awash in the haze of sodium vapour lamps; the chromatic brilliance of a sunset: light for Westman is an opportunity to index the energies and intimacies that constitute any given moment and the ways in which it is perceived, documented and assigned meaning.

In *muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation*, Westman presents a series of three works across CAG’s façade windows, each of which nods to the ways memory is shaped, staged and recalled. Referencing the backdrop, the mirror, the gel, and the cucoloris — each used in the photographic process to produce “ideal” images — these works offer a patient counterpoint to the fixity of the standalone photograph, drawing our attention to the felt structures found in light and shadow, sentiments that often elude being captured, shot, or taken. 

### Biography 

Nicole Kelly Westman is a visual artist of Métis and Icelandic descent that recognizes with indebted gratitude the artists that came before her and strenuously forged space, the curators that place care at the fore of their labour, the communities that foster confidence in her practice, and the institutions and organizations that implement policies prefacing relations of trust. As an artist, she enjoys practices of listening, watching, hosting, poeticizing, foraging, and sharing.


ProgramGuideWinter2021-small.pdf

ExhibitionGuideNicoleKellyWestman.pdf

A photograph showing diffuse orange light dappled with shadows against a reddish brown background. The warm light forms a loose rectangular shape with undefined borders in the centre of the image.

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Exterior image of the Contemporary Art Gallery displaying the work of Nicole Kelly Westman in the windows. The eight windows on the first floor are lit, highlighting various coloured backdrops.

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Exterior image of the Contemporary Art Gallery displaying the work of Nicole Kelly Westman in the windows. The eight windows on the first floor are lit, highlighting various coloured backdrops. 

thumbnail_02-NicoleKellyWestman-2021.jpg

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Exterior of the Contemporary Art Gallery displaying the work of Nicole Kelly Westman in the windows. The eight windows on the first floor are lit, highlighting various coloured backdrops.

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Detail shot of the exterior of the Contemporary Art Gallery displaying the work of Nicole Kelly Westman in a window. One window on the first floor is lit from the bottom displaying a red backdrop.

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muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation

In a meditation on land, language and architecture, Vancouver-based Obispeño Chumash and Hispanic artist Christine Howard Sandoval re-considers the insidious meaning-making power of the archive in her solo exhibition *A wall is a shadow on the land*. Through the use of adobe, a desert building material made from clay, sand and soil and deeply connected to her own family’s histories and practices, Howard Sandoval considers how land is and has been inhabited, the stories embedded in it and the potential futures it holds.

Howard Sandoval reconfigures the typology of Spanish mission architecture in a series of new adobe sculptures and large-scale drawings. Brought together with archival documents and the artist’s own fourth-grade school report on the California missions, she works to dislodge the deep-rooted colonial fictions that narrate the histories of her ancestral homeland in Alta California. *A wall is a shadow on the land* points to the ways in which narratives of colonial erasure are rehearsed within the public school system, and how the ongoing physical presence of mission sites on unceded Indigenous land in the western US are markers of the systemic proliferation of the imperial project and its persistent conditions today.

Co-curated by Julia Lamare and Kimberly Phillips

This exhibition is generously supported by the Audain Foundation.

Christine Howard Sandoval’s *Archival — for Rosario Cooper and my 10 year old self* is installed offsite at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station from January 22 – August 22, 2021. It is presented in partnership with Capture Photography Festival and the Canada Line Public Art Program, InTransit BC.


### Biography 

Christine Howard Sandoval is an interdisciplinary artist of Obispeño Chumash and Hispanic ancestry. Her work challenges the boundaries of representation, access and habitation through the use of performance, video and sculpture. Howard Sandoval makes work about contested places, such as the historic Native and Hispanic waterways of northern New Mexico; the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in New York; and an interfacing suburban-wildland in Colorado. Howard Sandoval has exhibited nationally and internationally at The Museum of Capitalism (Oakland, CA); Designtransfer, Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin, Germany); El Museo Del Barrio (Bronx, NY); and Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY). Her first solo museum exhibition debuted at The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center in May 2019, during which time she was the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Sandoval has also been awarded residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Triangle Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute (NY) and an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design (NY). She is currently Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at Emily Carr University (BC).


ProgramGuideSummer2021_CHS_YRHS.pdf

ExhibitionGuideChristineHowardSandoval.pdf

Essay: "CHRISTINE HOWARD SANDOVAL: A wall is a shadow on the land," Julia Lamare and Kimberly Phillips

A mound-like sculpture made from layers of adobe mud and strips of tape. A postcard with an image of a figure dressed in a religious habit is wedged into the mound, leaving only the torso visible.

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001 HEADER IMAGE - Sandoval.jpg

Three large scale drawings made of adobe mud and paper are suspended against the corner walls of a gallery space. In the middle sits a sculpture consisting of two mound-like forms on tripod stands.

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Three large scale drawings are suspended against the two sides of the corner wall of a gallery space. The drawings of architectural forms are made with striations of brown adobe mud on white paper. 

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One large scale drawing is suspended against the wall of a gallery space. The drawing of an architectural form is made with striations of brown adobe mud on white paper. 

thumbnail_03-ChristineHowardSandoval-2021.jpg

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A sculpture in a gallery space. The sculpture consists of two moud-like forms made of brown adobe mud and strips of tape, each sitting atop a metal, tripod-like form.

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An exterior view of a train station displaying Sandoval’s work printed in vinyl. The work includes a collage of scanned archival documents on one side of the station and scanned drawings on the other. 

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An exterior view of a train station displaying Sandoval’s work printed in vinyl. The work depicts an illustration of a Fransiscan friar on the left and on the right an enlarged drawing of a doorway. 

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An exterior view of a train station displaying Sandoval’s work on the glass facade printed in vinyl. The work depicts a collage of scanned and enlarged archival documents, including written notes. 

Video Visits

English Video Visits

Visites vidéo en français

Visitas de video en español

普通话视频之旅

粵語視頻參觀

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