IM4 LAB ARTISTS - 2022
The IM4 Lab supports Indigenous artists and media professionals by providing immersive learning and production opportunities and building an Indigenized tech ecosystem.
It was created by Indigenous filmmaker, Loretta Todd, alongside media matriarchs Doreen Manuel, Cease Wyss, and Tracey Kim Bonneau.
In collaboration with Emily Carr University, the IM4 Lab is dedicated to Indigenizing VR/AR/360 by enabling Indigenous communities to find effective ways to incorporate these technologies into educational, cultural, language, artistic, and commercial applications.
This is the second year that the IM4 Lab has collaborated with VMF Winter Arts, bringing together a group of artists with a focus on the local Host Nations.
The VMF Winter Arts 2022 artists curated by the IM4 LAB are Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, Jaad Kuujus, and Ocean Hyland.
Learn more about them and their art below and experience their AR installations around downtown during VMF Winter Arts (Feb11-27)!
Ocean Hyland (Tsleil-Waututh)
Ocean Hyland (ts;simtelot) is an artist working in the realms of painting and digital design and has gained valuable knowledge apprenticing for creators Zachary George and Aaron Nelson Moody.
Ocean is interested in revitalizing Coast Salish languages and has studied sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim at Simon Fraser University. On her matrilineal side she is Tsleil Waututh, Squamish, Cheam, Hawaiian, and Chinese. Through her father, she is Scottish and Irish. The richness and diversity of her cultural heritage is what inspires Ocean in her many art practices.
Hyland’s VMF Winter Arts 2022 AR installation, Returning Home, pays homage to the time when herring arrive for their annual spawn. The two canoe pullers are checking in on the herring and preparing for the harvest.
Experience her AR installation at Canada Place during VMF Winter Arts (Feb 11-27).
AR supported by Vancouver Fraser Port Authority
Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun (Snuneymuxw)
Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun is a Coast Salish artist and storyteller from the Snuneymuxw First Nation. His practice is rooted in honouring and celebrating the teachings and stories passed down by his community, and to share what he finds beautiful and profound about the Coast Salish worldview.
Eliot currently resides on the territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and is an MFA candidate at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
His VMF Winter Arts 2022 AR installation, Uy Shqweluwun (To Be of Good Mind), reflects a philosophical principle that is core to the teachings of the Coast Salish peoples: to be of good mind. The design represents how knowledge was passed down, as elders would take the children to the beach and sit around in a circle to share the ancestral stories.
The artist’s late great-grandmother, Dr. Ellen White, Kwulasulwut, would talk about how important it is to maintain this when making art, when interacting with each other, and when existing in the world. You wash the negativity away and open yourself. The good energy that exists in the land will be there for you. The good energy that comes from the ancestors will be there for you. The good energy that comes from each other will be there for you.
Experience his AR installation at Park Place Plaza, 666 Burrard Street, during VMF Winter Arts (Feb 11-27).
AR supported by QuadReal Property Group
Jaad Kuujus (Haida/Kwakwaka'wakw)
Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O'Brien) is an artist and weaver from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia.
She is a descendent of Haida / Kwakwaka'wakw / Irish origins, and has been traditionally trained by William White, Sherri Dick, Kerri Dick, and Donna Cranmer. Her work explores the intersection of Indigenous materials, worldview, and processes, and how they interact within the realms of fashion and the digital.
Her VMF Winter Arts 2022 AR installation, The Shape of Spirit, is based on a replica of a Naxxiin apron woven by Jaad Kuujus between 2015-2018.
The original was made from a robe that had been ceremonially cut, and re-fashioned into an apron. Jaad Kuujus has imagined the designs as a floor plan one could wander through, or as architectural spaces. This is an invitation into the multi-dimensional territories Jadd Kuujus occupies while weaving.
The artist invites people to contemplate the limits of how one can engage with or understand Northwest Coast Native Art, and to rethink how it occupies the world around us.
“I was inspired by the idea of being able to enter into a work of art. Sometimes when I look at art I wish I could enter it, like a building, which led to imagining what it would be like as a floor plan for a room, or as architectural shapes.
I loved the experience of working with everyone at VMF. Each individual I met proved to be incredibly open minded, creative, and really looking to explore what change means in the city landscape.”
— Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O'Brien)
Experience her AR installation at the Vancouver Public Library Square, 300 West Georgia Street, during VMF Winter Arts (Feb 11-27).
AR supported by Electronic Arts
From February 11-27, you can experience those AR installations around downtown Vancouver.
You can find the location on the map and on our free VMF app from February 11.
