210 Main Street, Joe Batt’s Arm
Newfoundland and Labrador A0G 2X0
Canada
Fogo Island Arts is delighted to announce its program for the year ahead, which includes a broad spectrum of activities to accompany its longstanding residency program in Newfoundland, traditional Mi’kmaw territory and the ancestral homeland of the Beothuk. The many restrictions and difficulties brought about in the past year halted travel to Fogo Island and placed the residency program on hiatus. This interval of suspended activities was accompanied by a concentrated period of reflection to reimagine the program and to consider how it will bridge connections in a continually fractured world between the local and wider global communities. Working with alumni as well as new artists, Fogo Island Arts has conceived a multitude of expanded projects in the form of exhibitions, programs, a new digital program entitled Lost & Found Agency accompanied by an online residency program and talk series, and a newly redesigned digital platform to provide access to these activities, as well as an archive of past events.
Lost & Found Agency will engage key thinkers and makers addressing themes pertaining to decolonization, the climate crisis, alternative economies, reciprocity, new forms of democracy and democratic engagement, migration, and consensus-building in the age of fake news, among other topics of the participants choosing.
“This program will be focused on asking questions about what has been lost, but also will seek to explore what alternative futures can be found,” said Nicolaus Schafhausen, Strategic Director of Fogo Island Arts, elaborating on the expansion of Fogo Island Arts, “We aim to enrich our current program of artist residencies with a broader scope of programs, which will grow further in the years ahead to encourage new opportunities for discourse and experimentation both locally and across global networks.”
Alongside these expanded programs, Fogo Island Arts will continue to host new residents on the island starting in 2021 with: Eli Kerr, Emily Pittman, Nicole Travers, Larry Weyand, and Nelson White.
Exhibitions:
Forecast: Rumors and Accounts of the Coronacene
Fogo Island Gallery
October 8–November 28, 2021
Susan Abma, Paddy Barry, Claudia Brahms, Jennifer Brett, Ron Broders, Fraser Carpenter, Lee Danisch, Clem Dwyer, Lilian Dwyer, Roy Dwyer, Marc Fiset, Norm Foley, Sonya Foley, Erin Hunt, M’Liz Keefe, Living Water Indoor Farm, Isabel McIlroy, Philip McIlroy, Bonnie McCay Merritt, Bruce Pashak, Christopher Payne, Carol Penton, Deb Reynolds, Brad Ruelens, Harry Sheppard, Caitlyn Terry, and Katrina Thompkins
For the first time since Fogo Island Arts’ inception in 2008, a group exhibition of work by Fogo Island and Change Islands community members will be held in the Fogo Island Gallery. The works featured in the exhibition have been selected in response to an open call for submissions encouraging artists to consider the positive potential of the current moment to write new stories together. The works explore themes ranging from individual and collective futures on the island in a post-pandemic world; to local connections with global currents and perspectives; to the relationships between economy, ecology, and community; and to more nuanced reflections on our present moment.
The program for the exhibition includes: a talk with the Director of Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Gaëtane Verna and a talk with Newfoundland-based artist and academic, Pam Hall.
Forthcoming exhibitions:
Shezad Dawood
Between Land & Sea
Fogo Island Gallery
December 17, 2021–March 6, 2022
Followed by solo exhibitions by Nadia Belerique, Artur Żmijewski, and Janice Kerbel.
Lost & Found Agency
Lost & Found Agency is an online public conversation and lecture series as well as a digital residency program featuring artists, professionals, and researchers from a variety of disciplines. Events will range from formal lectures to informal participatory conversations that encourage exchange in a peer-to-peer learning environment.
Lost & Found Agency is a response to the unprecedented social and economic impacts the global pandemic has had on artists and arts professionals. It is also a mode of dealing with Fogo Island Arts’ remoteness in an era of re-evaluating the impact of travel. This platform for discussion and engagement will be an opportunity to support participants practicing in a range of locations, by offering fees, strengthening capacity to build networks, and intended to increase the exposure of their work and ideas.
Forthcoming events:
Schools of Thought
Minh Nguyen
with Fogo Island Arts & Art Metropole
September 28, 2021, 6pm EST
Register to join
In partnership with Art Metropole, Fogo Island Arts presents “Schools of Thought,” a talk by Islands Writing Residency recipient and forthcoming artist-in-residence, Minh Nguyen. Schools of Thought will be the inaugural presentation in the Lost & Found Agency online talk series.
Though the latter half of the 20th century saw a shift from the object to idea in art across the globe, the dematerialization of art in socialist and “post-socialist” contexts reveal particular social tensions, including struggles against state power. Taking Vietnam—and the burst of experimental practices that followed the 1986 Đổi Mới “socialist-oriented market economy” reforms—as departure point, this talk examines the possibilities and limitations of conceptual art wielded as a covert form of free speech, in contexts where free speech’s recognizable forms have been suppressed. This talk also considers the influence of the communist imaginary, on artists responding to their countries’ communist heritage, and on avant-garde art movements more broadly.
Future events will be held in collaboration with Zheng Bo, Meagan Musseau, Mark Neocleous, amongst others. More details can be found here.
Digital residency:
The first digital residents are Takeover Skateboarding, a BIPOC, LGBTQ+ & 2S, and women centred community movement led by Ryme Lahcene, Taylor Lee, and BIPOC community in “Vancouver,” the ancestral, unceded (stolen) territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples.
Takeover Skateboarding creates safe spaces for those who have historically been and are currently marginalized and underrepresented within skateboarding. They aim to offer and encourage peer learning and support both in skateboarding and beyond. Fostering play as an act of resistance, Takeover uses skating and art as vehicles for radical conversations and movements. As part of their residency, Takeover will program a central part of the FIA website with material of their choosing as well as hosting a public workshop online.
Fogo Island Arts is part of Shorefast.
Fogo Island Arts is grateful to NuytenDime Family for their generous support of the Lost & Found Agency.
