Past Residencies
2026
2024
2023
Matilda Aslizadeh’s media installations and photo-based works are characterized by dense visual surfaces and unexpected juxtapositions drawn from a range of photographic, cinematic, and painterly influences. Deeply invested in exploring the critical potential of immersive spectacle, the ambivalent centrality of storytelling in human existence, and the fluid threshold between documentation and fictionalization, Aslizadeh’s work locates political thinking firmly within affective experience. Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and festivals, including exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, AC Institute (New York), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto.
Bei is an emerging interdisciplinary artist whose practice addresses politics of land, cultural memories, and collective identities. Working largely in photographic processes and installations, her research is rooted in critical studies on ‘the image’ and representation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land and how land is occupied, manifested and disseminated in our production of place, culture and identity. Currently, she has found fictitious unions between disparate subjects like land, language, affect, and body/bodies constructive in her understanding of self as an inconclusive and often confusing entity. However, it is through an exchange in dialogues—this sifting of what is retained, projected and disposed of that she has found fertile in informing her contemporary conditions.
Natalie Purschwitz is an artist living and working on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people. Her research is propelled by material exploration drawing on modes of making that include collecting, accumulating, arranging, editing, and writing. She is curious about the ways in which the landscape is shaped by humans and nonhumans, through systems of organization, networks of support and ruptures within these systems. By reconfiguring everyday objects, elemental substances and other lively combinations, she attempts to create conditions for material events. Purschwitz has shown her work nationally and internationally at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, BC), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, MB), the Japanese Canadian National Museum (Burnaby, BC), the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleingburg, ON), the Prince Takamato Gallery (Tokyo, Japan) and AGX Galerie (Tehran, Iran).
Rain Cabana-Boucher, is a Michif/British settler interdisciplinary artist raised in treaty 6 territory, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her family has historic ties to the Michif communities of St-François-Xavier, St. Boniface, and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She currently lives and works on the stolen land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xwməθkwəy̓əm Nations. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria. Cabana-Boucher is a recent recipient of the Takao Tanabe prize for emerging British Columbia Painters and the First Peoples Individual Artist grant. Their practice includes the use of mixed media works often using sculpture, drawing, painting, and beading. Cabana-Boucher explores the autobiographical in relation to place and politics; seeking to navigate the complexities of identity within environments that are rapidly changing under systematic pressures.
Miriam is a mixed-media visual artist and landscape designer, living in cə̓snaʔəm (so-called Marpole, Vancouver, BC) with Plains Cree and Irish roots. Miriam’s work explores themes of generational healing, hybrid identity, and land-based epistemologies. Her multidisciplinary approach explores the use of Plains Cree art-forms, using rough construction materials and found objects to express stories of place and experience. Miriam is the daughter of Theresa from Kahkewistahaw First Nation, Jim of Irish ancestry, and the step-daughter of Chris from the Six Nations of the Grand River. In August 2022, Miriam launched her practice “Land-Based Art+Design”. This practice combines both of her passions—art and landscape architecture—to pursue land-based art methodologies and provide decolonized architecture and planning services. She hopes her work will reveal truths, heal wounds caused by colonial violence, and uncover expressions and innovations that defy the colonial paradigm and promote a regenerative future.
2022
Coussonnet is interested in how visual cultures address political, social and spiritual issues in different, or complementary, ways to other disciplines. She has curated exhibitions at Bildmuseet (Sweden), Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati (USA), Le Cube (Morocco) and MeetFactory (Czech Republic).
Lacey Jane Wilburn is a contemporary painter most notable for her cinematic renderings of domestic space that undulate between gesture and realism on canvas. Originally from the Treaty 6 territory of Edmonton, Alberta, Wilburn studied Fine Art at the University of Grant MacEwan in Edmonton in 2009, received her Bachelors of Fine Art from Concordia University in Montreal in 2016 after studying abroad at the l’Ecole d'Enseignement Supérieur d'art de Bordeaux, France, Most recently she obtained her Masters of Fine Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2022. She has participated in over 40 exhibitions since 2009, was the recipient of the University Women’s Club of Vancouver Scholarship in 2022 and 2021, the Yves Gaucher Prize in Studio Arts in 2016, the D. L. Stevenson Colour Scholarship for Academic Excellence in 2014, the Francis Henderson Klingle Scholarship for Fine Art, The Barbara and John Poole Family Endowed Fund for the Arts in 2009, and the Jason Lang Scholarship for Excellence in 2007. In 2010, she formed the urban art duo LALA [Lacey And Layla Art] who have developed over 140 public mural interventions across Canada, France, Honduras, Uganda and Iceland, and have received over $150,000 in grants from federal and municipal funding. Now living in Vancouver, BC on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, Wilburn gratefully dedicates her time to painting, teaching and scuba diving.
James Harry was born of Squamish Nation and Namgis descent in 1989. James began carving in early childhood with his father, Xwalacktun. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in 2014 and completed an internship in the United Kingdom in 2011 where he learned metal casting and taught Coast Salish sculpture, painting and drawing in Scottish communities. Harry’s diverse portfolio includes cedar carvings, metal carvings, light installations and murals.
Kyla Gilbert is a visual artist based out of Vancouver BC on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She graduated with a BFA in performance from Concordia University in 2017 and spent the two subsequent years touring as a puppeteer with DJ Kid Koala. During her time as a puppeteer, she became interested in the inherent animacy of objects.
A Collaboration with the Queer Arts Festival & SUM gallery
Natis is a conceptual painter who lives and works in Berlin. His art materialises itself through multiple parallel and distinct research-based practices. He creates, embodies, and instrumentalists different performative artist personae for each of these practices that challenge the social understanding and the role of the artist as a (post-)modern subject. These alter-egos deal with various fields like; personal or communal memory and forgetting, speculative storytelling (non-)linear temporality, gender, post-colonialism, and new materialism. Besides his art practice, he works towards completing his doctorate at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) Hamburg on art-historical and contemporary use of visual artist alter egos, researching why these mental and physical alternations or mutations take place in artists’ lives.
Aileen Bahmanipour is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist and currently is living and working on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people. She has received her BFA in Painting from the Art University of Tehran and MFA in Visual arts from the University of British Columbia. Bahmanipour has exhibited her work in a body of solo and group exhibitions internationally as well as in Canada, including her solo and group exhibitions at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Vancouver’s grunt gallery, and Two Rivers Gallery.
Bill Burns, like Trylowsky, has created a project that prompts an examination of parallel economies. Burns’ ongoing research includes The Goat, the Salt, the Oil, a performance series that positions global trade as an art practice; at Griffin’s residency from December 8 to February 28, 2022, titled Three short films and several songs about Donkeys, Cowboys, Truckers and Container Ships, he will research a further speculative iteration of this project, activating the site of the Vancouver Harbour and producing a series of short films, this time proposing the trade of red snapper for goat’s milk, yogurt for honey, organizing a shipment of Nepalese salt for olives or other foodstuffs in Vancouver.
Esteban Pérez (b. 1992 in Quito, Ecuador) graduated from Emily Carr University of Arts + Design with an MFA degree in 2021. His work has been part of exhibitions such as: ‘Radical Reworlding’ (AHVA Gallery UBC, 2021), ‘Triplete’ (No Lugar, 2018), and Premio Brasil (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, 2017), and, in 2019 he had his first solo show Transitory (Más Arte, 2019). In 2020, he was the recipient of The Audain Travel Award in Vancouver. In the same year, he won the 2nd Place Award in RAW, an MFA online exhibition, organized by the University of Montana, USA. He was selected for the Premio Brasil –Arte Emergente (CAC), an award funded by the Brazilian embassy in Quito for the promotion of Emerging Artist. He was a resident at the Satellite Residency program at the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship in 2021.
2021
TanTan Hong is a multimedia installation artist, bookmaker, and educator from South Korea. Her practice has been based in Seoul, Hong Kong, LA, and now, in Vancouver. Her practice and research concern microorganisms, memories, and world building; her worlds connect the in-between spaces of fictional and historical landscapes birthed by American imperialism. TanTan holds a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from ECUAD.
Mollie Burke is a multi-disciplinary artist considering the relationship between computation and social abstraction. She lives and works in Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish territory. She holds a BA from McGill University in art history and cultural studies, a diploma of fine art from Langara, and a Masters of Fine Art from Emily Carr University of art and design. She was awarded the Bill Watson award for excellence in printmaking, the Barbara and Arne Vengshoel scholarship for excellence in visual arts, and the SSHRC graduate scholarship for her research in mediation. She was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Lind prize, and has shown in various spaces across Canada.
Griffin Art Projects is thrilled to announce an international residency exchange in partnership with the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa to take place in August and September 2021. This residency opportunity will connect a BIPOC Canadian artist with a Johannesburg-based artist over the course of an intensive two-month creation period during which the artists will have the opportunity to meet virtually, build a relationship and engage in critical dialogue fostered through scheduled studio visits and discussion sessions. This program will culminate in a live virtual open studio session featuring the artists in conversation over Zoom.
Griffin Art Projects is honoured to announce the distinguished artist Xwalacktun as the inaugural Indigenous Studio Award recipient. Xwalacktun is a renowned Master Carver of Coast Salish ancestry, from the Squamish and Kwakiutl clans. His remarkable work and career extend over forty years and across numerous forms, including public art, sculpture, metalwork, jewelry, glass work, drawing and printmaking. He is the recipient of the Order of British Columbia, the FANS Honours Award from the North Vancouver Arts Council which acknowledged his commitments both locally and worldwide and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Through an interdisciplinary practice that includes sculpture, new media, installation, and performance, as well as an educational background in both the sciences and arts, my work explores the psychic violence of cultural assimilation and the conditions that inform our understanding of place, citizenship, and national identity. From this groundwork, my practice has led me to question how technology plays a part in reinforcing the violence of nation states, racist economic policies, and human dispossession.
Alannah Clamp is an artist from Vancouver, British Columbia. She has her bachelor of fine arts in Photography from Emily Carr University, a Bachelors in Art History from Concordia University and a Masters in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland.
Chase Keetley is a multi-disciplinary African Canadian artist whose work is based in the Black Experience. He primarily investigates the mimicry and use of Blackness, such as the appropriation of cultural practices and iconography rooted in the Pan-African Ethnography.
Currently based in Vancouver, BC, Navarana Igloliorte is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker working in short gauge film, video, painting, printmaking and dance.
Jillian Ross is a Canadian-born Master Printmaker who currently directs the David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. Specializing in intaglio printing, Ross has to date collaborated with over 70 South African and international artists producing unique and editioned fine art prints.
Born in 1977 in Berkeley Babak Golkar spent his formative years in Tehran before moving to Vancouver in 1996. He obtained a BFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr Institute in 2003 and an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 2006.
Emily Neufeld was born in Alberta, on Treaty 6 and 7 land, and now lives and works on the unceded territory of the Squamish, T’seil Waututh and Musqueum in North Vancouver. Her practice investigates place and how humans change and are changed by the surrounding environment, and the layers of memory and psychic history that accumulate in our material world.
2020
Distinguished NSCAD alumna Kelly Lycan is a photo-based installation artist who resides in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Lycan’s work investigates the way objects and images are placed and displayed in the world and the cycle of value they experience. She employs photography and sculpture in order to engage them beyond medium specificity.
Lindsay McIntyre is a film artist with an MFA in Film Production from Concordia and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Alberta. She applies her interest in analogue technologies, film chemistry and structure to make award-winning short 16mm films and expanded cinema performances.
Taryn Sheppard is a Vancouver based artist and architect. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto (Master in Architecture, ‘10) and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (Bachelor of Fine Arts, ‘05).
Emilie Crewe (b. 1987, Québec City, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her artwork often takes the form of video installation, single-channel video, multi-channel video and sketch-work (drawings, collections & archives).
Lorenzo Fusi (b. 1968) is the Artistic Director and Curator of the I Yerevan Biennial. He was the Artistic Director of PIAC (Prix International d’Art Contemporain) of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (2014-2020), and the Visiting Academic Curator at the Alberta University of the Arts, where he directed the Illingworth Kerr Gallery between 2016-2018.
2019
Sierra Tasi Baker, MSc, BEnvD is an award-winning Squamish Nation, Coast Salish, Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingit, Haida & Hungarian designer, community consultant, entrepreneur, artist, and storyteller. Her work focuses on furthering Indigenous design and research methodologies whilst focusing on daylighting hidden histories and reconciliatory narratives.
Griffin Art Projects is pleased to welcome our first Emily Carr University Studio Residency Award Recipient, Sara-Jeanne Bourget, to our residency studio. Bourget was born in Lévis, Québec in 1988.
Emily Rosamund is a writer and artist, whose research stems from an interest in how historically situated performances of self are intertwined with developments in financial and informatic infrastructures. Her current work focuses on the implications of financialization and metrification for recent art practices that explore online identity and selfhood.
“I want to create layers of meaning, not just by building relationship, making connection and creating dialogues of the art works, but also by bringing alight the invisibles, the gaps or intervals, and the mystery. It is achieved by expanding the dimension of time and space in my works.”
Adrian Norvid was born in London, England and lives and works in Montreal. He received his MFA from York (Toronto) and has a BFA in Music also from York. Norvid has shown widely in Canada including solo shows at Galerie B312 (Montreal), AXE Neo7 (Gatineau), La Mussee de Joliette (Joliette), AKA (Saskatoon) and Julia Garnatz (Cologne.)
Zoe Kreye creates interdisciplinary art projects that explore transformation, embodiment and collective experience. Recent projects include De Fem (WAAP, Vancouver), Make Our Own Air (SPACE, London), Our Missing Body (Hochparterre Berlin, Western Front, Kamloops Art Gallery), FutureLoss (grunt gallery), Unlearning Practices (Unit Pitt , Goethe Satellite, %3Crotor%3E Graz).
Mahdyar Jamshidi is a photo-based artist and researcher who works and resides in Tehran, Iran. He received his Bachelor of Photography from Islamic Azad University in Tehran in 2007 and his Masters in Studio Art (Photo-Media) from the University of Sydney in 2012, and his Doctoral of Business Administration from the University of San Jose Recoletos, Philippines in 2016.
2018
Xuuya’ - Terrance Richard Baker (Haida/Skwxwu7mesh/Hawaiian), is a traditional artist and storyteller who was born in the waterways close to his mother’s homeland in Haida Gwaii. He began carving at the age of 6, and was self-taught until the age of 16, when he began to knife carve with Skwxwu7mesh artists Stan Joseph, and Floyd Joseph.
Steven Cottingham is an artist and curator based in Vancouver. His recent work investigates the spectral qualities of material culture and labour relations under capitalism, with particular attention to real estate markets and unceded territory.
The Griffin Art Projects is collaborating with PortLiving, to facilitate an international Curatorial Residence Program. The project is an innovative partnership which brings career support and cultural development opportunities to local artists so that they may grow international relationships by bringing established curators to Vancouver so they may know, engage with and enrich our community.
We are happy to welcome Berlin based artist, Beate Terfloth to our Artist in Residence program. Terfloth (b. 1958) engages with an artistic practice that conveys a sense of vast openness through the simple use of reduction.
Griffin Art Projects is excited to welcome Berlin based artist Mario Asef for a brief stay in our Artist Residence. Mario Asef’s artistic works develop—as he himself states—out of “the illusory construction of social reality.”
The Griffin is excited to welcome Vancouver-based artist Hamidreza Jadid to our Artist-in-Residence program from February to April. Jadid works in painting, sculpture and installation, and recently received his Masters in Fine Arts from the School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU.
2017
Rachelle Sawatsky is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Her work encompasses painting, writing, ceramics and drawing. Moving between figure and field, material and medium, Sawatsky negotiates the tensions inherent in creating images to realize an art that explores histories of making within a contemporary, expressive project.
Kate Mosher Hall (b.1986) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice ranges from printmaking, painting, sculpture, performance, ceramics and drumming. Hall’s practice is concerned with language and its slippages, specifically relating to trauma and self-representation.
Through the months of August and September, we have had the pleasure to host Scott Treleaven in our residency program. During his time in North Vancouver, Scott has been developing a new zine, consisting of torn and reconfigured photographic material and texts, which will be published by Griffin Art Projects.
We are excited to welcome Paul P. as our summer Artist in Residence. Paul will be working with gallery director Lee Plested and Toronto based curator Rui Mateus Amaral to reconfigure his exhibition which originated at Scrap Metal, Toronto, and will open at Griffin Art Projects on September 22, 2017.
Griffin Art Projects is pleased to welcome our spring artist in residence, New York based painter Michael Bauer, who will be working here in the studio through the middle of May. We will present a public conversation with Michael Bauer and GAP Director Lee Plested on Saturday, April 22, 3pm.
We are delighted to welcome French artist Caroline Mesquita to our residence for the month of March. Mesquita’s sculptural practice intertwines the materiality of her altered, oxidized, and painted copper and brass sheets with theatrical playfulness.
Griffin Art Projects is pleased to welcome our new artist in residence, Cease Wyss, and announce an extension of Leigh Tennant’s studio research, which began this fall, into the 2017 Winter Residency.
2016
Griffin Art Projects is pleased to welcome Leigh Tennant and Alison Yip to our Fall 2016 Artist in Residence program.
We are pleased to welcome Charlene Vickers, an Anishnabe artist living and working in Vancouver, to be our inaugural artist is residence. Vickers’ residency will run from March 25 through the end of June.