Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture - Public Projects

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Charlene Vickers, “Accumulations of Moments Spent Underwater with the Sun and Moon,” 2015-2016

detail, Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery.

Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture

CAG Façade and off-site at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station

Encompassing a wide range of media—including painting, sculpture, performance, and installation—the practice of Charlene Vickers operates as a visionary expression of what the artist terms embodied territory. Giving vital form to the lands, histories and relations of her birthplace in Wauzhushk Onigum as they are felt, imagined and carried across distance, Vickers’ works lucidly manifest ancestral connections, cultural reclamations and her territorial presence as Anishinaabe Kwe, while responding formally to the Coast Salish land she has resided upon for the past thirty years.

Following her fall 2021 exhibition, Ancestor Gesture, two of Vickers’ public-facing projects remain on view this season. On the façade of CAG, the artist presents Accumulations of Moments Spent Underwater with the Sun And Moon, a series of outsized reproductions of her iconic zigzag paintings. Drawing inspiration in part from the quillwork embroidery of her ancestors, these works kaleidoscopically render the rhythms and patterns of the landscapes Vickers moves through, both natural and urban. At Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Vickers offers Felt Ovoids, printing a series of her iconic mixed-media fibre works on the station’s exterior in a scene evocative of vitality, community and exchange. 

Felt Ovoids is presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program—InTransit BC.

Biography

Charlene Vickers is an Anishinaabe artist based in Vancouver. Her painting, sculpture and performance works explore memory, healing and embodied connections to ancestral lands. Recent exhibitions include a co-presentation with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun, Macaulay & Co. Fine Art (2021); Rain Shadow, Nanaimo Art Gallery (2021); Biennale nationale de sculpture Contemporaine, Quebec (2020); the map is not the territory at the Portland Art Museum (2019); Speaking From Hands and Earth, SFU Galleries (2018); Connective Tissue: New Approaches in Contemporary Fibre Art, MoCNA, Santa Fe (2017); and If We Never Met, Pataka Art Museum, Porirua, New Zealand (2016). Vickers is the recipient of the 2018 VIVA Award. She graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1994) and Simon Fraser University (Critical Studies of the Arts, 1998; MFA, 2013).