AFA News

The Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) Travelling Exhibition, Women Gone Wild! explores the subject of wild creatures and the natural world as expressed in the work of three contemporary women artists from Edmonton. Featuring works by Cynthia Fuhrer, Jenny Keith and Samantha Walrod, the depictions of wild creatures presented by these artists range from realistic representations to more abstract and surrealistic impressions. These artists also demonstrate diverse reasons for choosing their subjects. Whatever their artistic approach and intentions, however, all three artists reveal a love and respect for nature in their works and through them invite viewers to ‘go wild‘ as well.

Featuring works by Cynthia Fuhrer, Jenny Keith and Samantha Walrod, the depictions of wild creatures presented range from realistic representations to more abstract and surrealistic impressions.

These artists also demonstrate diverse reasons for choosing their subjects.

While Samantha Walrod emphasizes materiality in her imagery, both Jenny Keith and Cynthia Fuhrer are more concept driven, addressing personal concerns and the relationship of humanity to the natural world in their paintings. 

Curated by Shane Golby, Art Gallery of Alberta (TREX Region 2)

Education guide

A dot is a point in space. A series of dots in a row draws a line. A line can signal an interruption or an end, but it can also extend infinitely in either direction from any point. A flat, two-dimensional surface that has the potential to extend indefinitely between points or lines is a plane. A point, a line, a plane, each is a basic building block of a visual composition. A set of parallel, intersecting lines on a plane is a grid. A grid is a system.

MARY SHANNON WILL dot.dot.dot. exhibits the artist’s use of the dot or pixel, the line, and the grid to make artworks that explore chance colour combinations and nonrepeating patterns within rule-based systems. The exhibition includes twenty-six colourful abstract paintings, drawings, digital prints, and mixed media works on paper produced by the artist between 1987 and 2017.

Together, they provide an intimate glimpse into the artist’s life and work; bright gems oscillating with concentrated energy drawn from her experience of the world.

Curated by Diana Sherlock

Education guide

Land Eater - A Travelling Exhibition of Artworks by Jude Griebel

September 7, 2023 - August 28, 2024

Jude Griebel’s solo exhibition Land Eater invites reflection on human interactions with land and our impact on natural ecologies. While the art conceptually explores consumption and degradation, each work invites whimsical and open-ended curiosity about how we define land and our relationship to it.

There is uncanny tension present in Griebel’s anthropomorphized landscapes and protesting-insect sculptures, which prompt important questions regarding who is truly holding the proverbial “talking stick” in our current conversations around climate change and consumerism. If the various organisms we share Earth with are bearing signs of resistance, what specifically is at the root of their dissent? If the land is speaking to us, what is it saying?

How do we respond in turn? Each of the artworks in Land Eater contemplates incredibly complicated and nuanced relationships that humans are currently navigating related to environmental stewardship.

The questions raised within these works allow viewers to speculate on possibilities and encourage curiosity about what the future may hold — not just for humans, but for all natural organisms and the living Earth.

Curated by Ashley Slemming

Eduction guide

September 7, 2023 - August 28, 2024

The exhibition ReconciliACTIONS reminds us that reconciliation is an ongoing process, a chain of care and repair, not a one-and-done event. Decolonizing our relationships with one another and drawing new pathways of understanding based on mutual respect is empowering for all of us.

Indigenous, settler, immigrant, and refugee alike all play an integral role in enacting reconciliation. Dominique (T8aminik) Rankin and Marie-Josée Tardif explain in the quote above that what matters most for everyone, regardless of beliefs, is that we free ourselves from suffering by learning to dance on the path that has not been burnt by the modern world.

We are being encouraged to rebuild balance and harmony into our lives together – a dance free of the shame, self-importance, greed, and noise of modern life.

These modern world attributes have clouded our ability to truly see each other, inhibiting the repair of our relationships, individually and collectively. We cannot move forward in reconciliation if we do not listen and dance with patience and vulnerability.

ReconciliACTIONS is an invitation to contemplate how we can show up with care in actively carrying reconciliation forward. All persons have agency to create ripples of change, and the Indigenous artists who are included in this exhibition are contributing to this change by educating the public and sharing their knowledge and experiences through their art.

As you look at each artwork, consider the artist, their experiences, and what message each artwork might be conveying. Consider how your own actions can be instruments of change in the ongoing process of reconciliation.

This exhibition features artworks by:

• Madeline Belanger
• Kalum Teke Dan
• Delree Dumont
• Michael Fatt
• Em Forbes
• Flora Johnson
• Saila Kilabuk
• Donna Langhorne
• Christiana Latham
• Aloysius Manybears
• Shelley May
• Tracey Metallic
• Audra/Keevin Simeon-Rider
• Tamara Shepherd
• Gordon Wesley
• Ryan Jason Allen Willert
• Lana Whiskeyjack
• Autumn Whiteway
• Three youth artists from Stardale Women’s Group – Kory, Jaylena, and Mazzy

Education guide

George Littlechild
Cross Cultural Examination #2 
2007
ink jet print on paper
Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

The AFA is pleased to share the virtual exhibition, Cross Cultura, curated by Indigenous curator, visual artist and archaeologist, Autumn Whiteway (Night Singing Woman) is now on Google Arts & Culture.  

Tour the online exhibition now!

About the artist

Autumn Whiteway (“Night Singing Woman”) is a Saulteaux/Métis visual artist, traditional craft worker, curator and archaeologist based in Calgary, Alberta. She explores Indigenous themes from a contemporary perspective through painting, digital art and photography.

Her painting and digital art is primarily focused on the heavily symbolic Woodland Style of Indigenous art, while her photography is used as a form of activism to highlight Indigenous issues. Her work has been exhibited at locations such as Arts Commons, cSpace King Edward, ATB Branch for Arts and Culture, and Calgary Public Library.

Autumn recently joined the Glenbow Museum as their new Curator, Indigenous Art.

Autumn’s degrees include an M.A. in Anthropology from University of Manitoba (2017), a B.Sc. in Archaeology, and a B.A. in Greek and Roman Studies.

Her curatorial work has focused on elevating the voices of Indigenous creatives through a series of Indigenous focused exhibitions. Autumn’s curatorial repertoire includes three group exhibitions held at multiple Calgary venues between 2020-2022, known as “Indigenous Motherhood and Matriarchy.”

About the exhibition

Cross Cultura is a group exhibition comparing Indigenous and non-Indigenous aesthetics and epistemologies, with the latter centered on Eurocentric settler colonial perspectives. Download the exhibition catalogue.

The exhibition comprises 13 artwork pairings (one for each moon of the lunar calendar that is traditionally utilized by Indigenous peoples). Each pairing features an Indigenous and non-Indigenous artist portraying conceptually similar subject matters from different worldviews.

Subject matters range from community and family relations, to work and social life, the cosmos and human-animal interactions. Additional pairings focus on gender-based representation in portraiture, and the medium of stone carving.

Through the Fellowship for Emerging Curators, the AFA invites individuals and/or groups of individuals to submit a proposal for an online exhibition of Albertan visual art. Funded exhibitions are uploaded to Google Arts & Culture. Autumn was the AFA's 2021-22 Emerging Curator Fellow. 

Watch Autumn describe her exhibition in "Curating from the Collection"

Autumn describes the Cross Cultura starting at 6:25 of the video below:

February is Black History Month. A month of remembrance, recognition, celebration and honouring of black Canadians. One of the many ways to take part in Black History Month is through the arts. 

Take the time to engage with the work of black creatives who, in their own mediums, create platforms for us to reflect on the history, accomplishments and contributions of black people in Canada. 

The AFA is pleased to feature artwork for the AFA Art Collection recently acquired through the AFA's Art Acquisition by Application program. 

Artwork from Simone Saunders and AJA Louden were acquired in 2023 and both were selected as Work of the Week in recognition of Black History Month 2024.

Celebrating Black History Month 

Access the Government of Alberta's "Black History Month - Events search" if you are looking for Black History Month events in your community.