Worldings + Future Worldings
Resource Hub
March 2021
Sept 2024
On this page you will find a compiled resource of Worldings + Future Worldings which were multi-year artistic projects with cultural exchanges spanning across 2 continents, 4 international artist residencies, 7 artists-in-residence, 3 lead curators, 3 exhibitions, 2 conferences and countless collaborators.
The intent of the project was to explore the resonances and divergences of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions which had unfolded in each country, through the work of Canadian and South African artists.
We truly thank the collaborators, participants and funders who were part of making this momentous project possible.
Image: Xwalacktun, Osieum (A gesture of thanks), 2024. Old-growth Red Cedar, 90 cm (d). Photo by Anthea Pokroy.
Table of Contents
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The Worldings project commenced with a residency with leading South African collaborative Master Printer, Jillian Ross.
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The second stop of the project led us to create a solo exhibition with the work of the eminent Master Printer William Kentridge.
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In the third chapter of this project, Griffin Art Projects and Urban Shaman (Winnipeg) co-presented Worldings: A Virtual Conference.
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For the fourth chapter of this project, Griffin Art Projects participated in an international residency exchange in partnership with the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This residency opportunity completed the Worldings section of the project and connected Canadian artists Xwalacktun, Nura Ali, and Sun Forest with South African-based artists Pebofatso Mokoena, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, and Wezile Mgibe over the course of an intensive two-month creation period.
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The fifth chapter of this project brought us to the Future Worldings section of the project. During this leg, Griffin Art Projects facilitated the participation of esteemed artist Xwalacktun in a two-part residency in Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of the Future Worldings exchange.
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The sixth chapter of the project and conclusion of Xwalacktun’s NIROX residency, culminated in the exhibition Relief. The exhibition was presented at the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture curated by Sven Christian.
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The seventh chapter of this project was the Future Worldings Reading Group. This group gathered of project partners, artists, writers, and presenters who shared and read diverse texts together.
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The eighth chapter of the project created the opportunity for the artists and curators from the Worldings part of the project to meet in person for the first time for an international exchange of public programs, residencies, workshops, reading groups, an exhibition, and a conference.
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The ninth chapter of this project was a performance by South African artist Wezile Ngibe Harmans on the occasion of the Future Worldings exhibition.
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The tenth stop of this project culminated in the Future Worldings exhibition. Curated by Lisa Baldissera, Usha Seejarim and Karen Tam, Future Worldings brings Canadian artists Nura Ali, Sun Forest and Xwalacktun together with Johannesburg-based South African artists Pebofatso Mokoena, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela and Wezile Harmans to consider approaches of collective and collaborative “worldmaking.”
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Three years later, the tenth and final stop on the project was the Future Worldings Conference organized by the Aboriginal Gathering Place + Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at Emily Carr University, UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, and Griffin Art Projects. The conference considers approaches to shared “worldmaking,” employing a collective and collaborative methodology that arises from the contributions of partners, presenters and audience members.
Future Worldings cohort at Similkameen Artist Residency with residency coordinator, Alexandra Bischoff.
Installation view at the Future Worldings Exhibition.
Future Worldings Artist + Curator Roundtable at the Future Worldings Conference. (R-L) Pebofatso Mokoena, Lisa Baldissera, Usha Seejarim, Karen Tam, Lebogang Mogul, Nura Ali, Sun Forest.
1. Jillian Ross Printmaking Residency
February, 2021
The Worldings project commenced with a residency with leading South African collaborative master printer Jillian Ross.
Returning to Canada in 2020, Ross was the Master Printer and Director of the David Krut Workshop (DKW) in Johannesburg, South Africa, for 16 years working with celebrated South African and international artists in collaborative printmaking.
Artist talk by Jillian during her Griffin Art Projects Residency.
Master Printer Jillian Ross (right) with printers Chad Cordeiro (left) and Sbongiseni Khulu (centre). Photograph by Richard Kilpert at the Centre of Arts Education, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, December 2019. Courtesy of artist.
Pictured above is the core collaborative team for William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments Woodcuts series (2016 – 2020) published by David Krut Workshop.
2. William Kentridge: The Colander
May 29 - September 4, 2021
Curated by Lisa Baldissera
The second chapter of the project led Griffin Art Projects to create a solo exhibition with the work of the eminent Master Printer William Kentridge.
Drawing from private collections in Western Canada as well as a selection of previous works, including the decades long film cycle, Drawings for Projections (1989 – 2020), this exhibition also featured new works from the Kentridge Studio in Johannesburg, South Africa produced during 2020’s global pandemic.
Curator’s Tour with Lisa Baldissera
William Kentridge, Triumphs and Laments Woodcuts: Refugees (1 God’s Opinion is Unknown; 2 Leaning on Air), 2018-2019.
3. Worldings: Virtual Conference
July 4 - 11, 2021
In the third chapter of this project, Griffin Art Projects and Urban Shaman (Winnipeg) co-presented Worldings: A Virtual Conference. Over the course of one weekend, this conference featured a series of collaborative panels and presentations facilitated live over Zoom across two time zones, from Canada to South Africa, and explored the unique artistic perspectives and histories that exist in Canadian and South African experience as seen through the eyes of artists, writers, curators and activists.
Coinciding with the presentation of the solo exhibition William Kentridge: The Colander, curated by Lisa Baldissera, this virtual gathering reflects on the parallel TRC processes in each country through the experiences that have unfolded in each place, unique histories of precarity, globalization and colonization, to focus on resilience and resistance.
Imperfect Constellations
Resilience and resistance from a BIPOC settler perspective.
From institutional critiques to explorations into the politics of archives and the effects of colonialism on diasporic communities in Canada, this panel explores ways that art and artists address gaps in dominant discourse and narratives by creating and sharing space for underrepresented voices to tell their stories.
The Collapse
Creative Liberation of Collective Making.
South Africa and Canada share historical traumas, journeys of colonial imposition and the incomplete expedition for truth. The Centre for the Less Good Idea shares its creative processes from a selection of works exploring historical violence, erasure and omission, questioning whether in our strategies of collective making we can discover new meaning that nurtures and fulfils our collective creative potentials.
Indigenous Public Art
Places, Histories, and Truths.
This panel discussion in which we considers nuances, challenges, and opportunities around exhibiting and creating works of public art at a time when movements such as LAND BACK, the TRC and the MMIWG Commissions stand powerfully as forces against narrow readings and the direct drawing of lines to between art and reconciliation.
Bag Factory
30 Years of Collective Imagination.
The Bag Factory was founded in 1991 in a fractured political climate, shifting urban environment, and social (re)imagining, and has supported the development of local innovation and international dialogue. This discussion will explore the early vision and ethos of the artists who founded the Bag Factory, its resilience in the urban context of Johannesburg, as well as an overview of current projects and initiatives.
4. Worldings: Digital Residency
August - September, 2021
For the fourth chapter of this project, Griffin Art Projects participated in an international residency exchange in partnership with Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This residency opportunity completed the Worldings section of the project and connected Canadian artists Xwalacktun, Nura Ali, and Sun Forest with South African-based artists Pebofatso Mokoena, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, and Wezile Mgibe over the course of an intensive two-month creation period.
During this time, artists had the opportunity to meet virtually, build collegial relationships and engage in critical dialogue fostered through scheduled curatorial studio visits and discussion sessions with curators David Garneau, Andrea Walsh, Karen Tam, and to think through de-colonial futures together. This program culminated in a series of live virtual open studio sessions with the artists in dialogue over Zoom.
Meet the Residents
Master Squamish and Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor and carver
Multidisciplinary artist and a self-proclaimed monotypebabe and zinequeen based in Johannesburg
Wezile Mgibe
Nura Ali
Art practitioner whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, film, installation as a tool for social change
Visual artist, community organizer and social activist, living and working in Calgary, Alberta
Lebogang Mogul Mabusela
Xwalacktun
Pebofatso Mokoena
Sun Forest*
Interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of painting, architecture, and personal narratives
First-generation Korean Canadian artist working across sculpture, video, performance, and new media
*Formerly Josephine Lee
Meet the Curators
David Garneau (Métis) is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing. He recently curated the Biennial of Indigenous Art (Montreal) with assistance from Faye Mullen and rudi aker; co-curated, with Kathleen Ash Milby, Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, National Museum of the American Indian, New York; With Secrecy and Despatch, with Tess Allas, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia; and Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. Garneau has recently given keynote talks in Australia, Aotearoa, the US, and Canada.
Dr. Karen Tam (Adjunct Curator, Griffin Art Projects) is an artist and curator whose research focuses on the various forms of constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities realized through her installation work, in which she recreates spaces of Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters.
Since 2000 she has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in North America, Europe and China, including at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada) and He Xiangning Art Museum (China). She was the winner of the 2021 Giverny Capital Prize awarded by the Fondation Giverny pour l’art contemporain, a finalist for the Prix Louis-Comtois from the Contemporary Art Galleries Association and the Ville de Montréal in 2017, a finalist for the Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec in 2016, and longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2016 and 2010.
Tam lives and works in Montreal. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Andrea N. Walsh is a visual anthropologist who specializes in 20th-century and contemporary aboriginal art and visual culture in Canada, as well as theoretical and methodological approaches to visual research. Walsh is interested in collections of objects and images and how museums and galleries curate and exhibit these pieces of material culture. Her primary purpose for thinking about collections is to consider how institutions, which care for Indigenous objects and images, engage Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and audiences through curatorial and exhibition practice. Her work critically reflects on and addresses discourses and actions of reconciliation and redress regarding relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada. Walsh’s focus on these larger issues through art and visual culture flows through art and cultural and educational institutions. The majority of her work as a visual anthropologist and curator is based in community-led research initiatives that seek to engage these institutions and their practices.
5. Future Worldings: International Residency - South Africa
May 26th to June 30th, 2024
The fifth chapter on this project brought us to the Future Worldings section of the project. During this leg, Griffin Art Projects facilitated the participation of esteemed artist Xwalacktun in a two-part residency in Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of the Future Worldings exchange!
This residency took place from May 26 - June 30, 2024 and is produced in collaboration with the Bag Factory, Johannesburg, and NIROX Residency and Sculpture Park, and was coordinated by guest curator Usha Seejarim and artist Kate Swart.
Xwalacktun
Master Squamish and Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor and carver
During his five-week residency in South Africa, Xwalacktun visited key Johannesburg sites, including the Constitution Hill Prison and Courthouse, the Credo Mutuwa Cultural Village and the site of Latitudes Art Fair. He met with students from the printmaking centre Artist Proof Studio, with renowned sculptor and conceptual artist Willem Boschof and with eminent South African artist William Kentridge, among other local artists, curators, academics and gallerists. Facilitated by artist Collen Maswanganyi, Xwalacktun also toured the Limpopo region, where he met with Master Carvers Johannes Maswanganyi and Dr Noria Mabasa. At NIROX, Xwalacktun participated in a ten-day woodcarving workshop titled “Carving X Two” alongside artists Dada Khanyisa, Collen Maswanganyi, Johan Moolman, Simon Moshapo Junior, John Nkhoma, Usen Obot and Ben Tuge.
6. Relief (Exhibition)
June 29 to September 2, 2024
The sixth chapter of the project and conclusion of Xwalacktun’s NIROX residency, culminated in the exhibition Relief. The exhibition was presented at the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture curated by Sven Christian.
The exhibition includes both pre-existing and new works, produced during a ten-day woodcarving workshop titled "Carving X Two," by Dada Khanyisa, Collen Maswanganyi, Johan Moolman, Simon Moshapo Junior, John Nkhoma, Usen Obot, Ben Tuge, and Xwalacktun. It focuses on an age-old form of sculptural practice from a variety of contemporary perspectives, highlighting different approaches to relief work in wood (rather than rock or stone) as a mode of storytelling and its relationship to sculpture in the round.
Relief: Behind the Scenes
7. Future Worldings: Reading Group
July - August, 2024
The seventh chapter of this project was The Future Worldings Reading Group. This group gathered of project partners, artists, writers, and presenters who shared and read diverse texts together. Meeting on two separate occasions in July and August 2024, the group shared readings that had influenced their approaches to “worlding” and shaped their considerations of the specific political, artistic and philosophical conditions at the sites of their research. The annotated list is below.
8. Future Worldings: International Residency - Canada
August 25 - September 15, 2024
The eighth chapter of the project created the opportunity for the artists and curators from the Worldings part of the project to meet in person for the first time for an international exchange of public programs, residencies, workshops, reading groups, an exhibition, and a conference. This included one week at Similkameen Artist Residency (Similkameen) and one month at Griffin Art Projects (North Vancouver).
While in residence at SAR and Griffin Art Projects, participating artists took part in a series of cultural exchanges and events, including a visit to En’owkin Centre; Cultural Protocols and Learning on the Land in the Similkameen with Anona Kampe; a visit to kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery, a salmon restoration project led by the Syilx people; a Decolonization Tour at UBC; and curator-hosted visits to the Museum of Anthropology and the Museum of Vancouver, as well as engagements at other local organizations. Emily Carr University hosted Future Worldings artist visits, presentations and workshops.
These events culminated into the Future Worldings exhibition, which featured work created during the residencies, alongside additional works from the artists’ studios and collections, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and performance. The artists considered the following questions stated in the curatorial thesis for the Future Worldings project:
What are the conditions for creating the world?
How do we imagine ways of creating a cosmology?
What forms of language/terms/collection of understanding might this encompass?
Connecting the works of all the artists is the centrality of the body as a site of cultural space and of knowing and receiving the world.
Meet the Residents
Wezile Mgibe
Nura Ali
Art practitioner whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, film, installation as a tool for social change
Visual artist, community organizer and social activist, living and working in Calgary, Alberta
Lebogang Mogul Mabusela
Xwalacktun
Multidisciplinary artist and a self-proclaimed monotypebabe and zinequeen based in Johannesburg
Master Squamish and Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor and carver
Pebofatso Mokoena
Sun Forest*
Interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of painting, architecture, and personal narratives
First-generation Korean Canadian artist working across sculpture, video, performance, and new media
*Formerly Josephine Lee
Meet the Curators
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Lisa Baldissera
Dr. Lisa Baldissera (Director, Griffin Art Projects) has worked in curatorial roles in public art galleries in Western Canada since 1999, including curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1999–2009), senior curator at Contemporary Calgary (2014–16) and chief curator at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon (2012–14).
She has produced more than 70 exhibitions of local, Canadian and international artists. She holds MFAs in Creative Writing (UBC) and Art (University of Saskatchewan) and a PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Baldissera has served on contemporary art juries across Canada and internationally, including for the Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize (Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation), Canada Council for the Arts, Saskatchewan Arts Board, Royal Bank of Canada Canadian Painting Competition, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards, the Sobey Art Award, British Columbia Arts Council, Prix Pierre-Prince-de-Monaco jury and as a guest of the British Arts Council outreach program.
She lives and works on the unceded territories of the Sechelt peoples and, at Griffin, on the unceded territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
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Karen Tam
Dr. Karen Tam (Adjunct Curator, Griffin Art Projects) is an artist and curator whose research focuses on the various forms of constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities realized through her installation work, in which she recreates spaces of Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters.
Since 2000 she has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in North America, Europe and China, including at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada) and He Xiangning Art Museum (China). She was the winner of the 2021 Giverny Capital Prize awarded by the Fondation Giverny pour l’art contemporain, a finalist for the Prix Louis-Comtois from the Contemporary Art Galleries Association and the Ville de Montréal in 2017, a finalist for the Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec in 2016, and longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2016 and 2010.
Tam lives and works in Montreal. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
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Usha Seejarim
Usha Seejarim (Independent curator and artist, Johannesburg) is a conceptual and socially engaged artist who uses found and common objects to communicate complex and simple ideas about the domestic position of women.
The rhythms in her work create sculptures that hold a strong presence of tears and protrusions bringing forth the domestic sphere of our experiences. Seejarim holds an MFA from the University of The Witwatersrand (2008) and a B-Tech Degree in Fine Art (1999) from the University of Johannesburg. Seejarim is also a qualified laughter coach. She has completed a number of public art commissions, including the official portrait for Nelson Mandela’s funeral in Qunu; Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown; MTN’s and Eskom’s head office; and the South African Chancery in Addis Ababa.
She has had numerous solo shows and exhibited on various local and international platforms, including The Red Hour at Dak’Art, the Ostrale and Beijing Biennales and 1:54 London. Her work is represented in numerous private and public art collections, including Kunstraum and Galila’s P.O.C in Belgium; Fondazione Fiera Milan, Italy; South African Foundation for Contemporary Art, France/SA; and Iziko National Gallery, South Africa.
9. Future Worldings: Performance
September 15, 2024
The ninth chapter of this project was a performance by South African artist Wezile Ngibe Harmans on the occasion of the Future Worldings exhibition.
As Ngibe Harmans chooses not to document his performances, below is an image of the sets and props he used for this performance.
Still image from Wezile’s Future Worldings performance.
10. Future Worldings: Exhibition
September 28 - December 15, 2024
The tenth and penultimate stop of this project culminated in the Future Worldings exhibition. Curated by Lisa Baldissera, Usha Seejarim and Karen Tam, Future Worldings brings Canadian artists Nura Ali (based in Calgary, on the lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Tsuut’ina, Îyâxe Nakoda Nations and Métis Nation Region 3), Sun Forest and Xwalacktun (both residing on the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm [Musqueam], Skwxwú7mesh [Squamish] and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh [Tsleil-Waututh] Nations) together with Johannesburg-based South African artists Pebofatso Mokoena, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela and Wezile Harmans to consider approaches of collective and collaborative “worldmaking.” The project concerns itself with how it may be possible to “world” collectively while retaining the specificities of site, body, history, access and cultural understandings.
Virtual Exhibition Walkthrough
Exhibition Documentation
11. Future Worldings: Conference
September 28, 2024
The eleventh and final stop on the project was the Future Worldings Conference organized by the Aboriginal Gathering Place + Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at Emily Carr University, UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, and Griffin Art Projects. The conference considers approaches to shared “worldmaking,” employing a collective and collaborative methodology that arises from the contributions of partners, presenters and audience members.
Watch the Conference
Future Worldings was generously supported by funding received from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Freybe Foundation, the Government of Canada, the Hamber Foundation, Metro Vancouver's Regional Cultural Project Grants program, the Michael and Inna O’Brian Family Foundation, North Vancouver Recreation and Culture, the Peter and Betty Haworth Fund at the West Vancouver Foundation, and the Vancity Community Branch Grant.
Xwalacktun’s South African residencies were generously supported by funding received from the BC Arts Council’s Professional Development grant program.
Future Worldings was produced in partnership with the Aboriginal Gathering Place, Artist Proof Studios, Bag Factory, Contemporary Art Society Vancouver, the Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, NIROX Foundation, Similkameen Artist Residency and Transformative Memory International Network / Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia.
