BC Art Teachers' Association
2022 BCATA Annual Conference
Re-stART: refresh, reset and renew
Register for the BCATA Conference NOW!Register for the BCATA Conference NOW! We are so excited to be offering an incredible selection of workshops AND our keynote speaker is internationally renowned artist Sonny Assu! This year we have it all! You can attend sessions virtually, attend in-person offerings at various galleries across the province and watch pre-recorded sessions on the day of AND for up to a week after the conference ends! Here are just a few of the workshops: This year we have partnered with galleries across the province to bring you pre-recorded tours of their current shows AND in-person tours and workshops in your community! Participating galleries include the Vancouver Art Gallery, Richmond Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Yellow House Art Centre Galiano Island. Other galleries providing pre-recorded OR in-person tours and workshops OR virtual tours include Surrey Art Gallery, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Audain Gallery, and Langley Centennial Museum. You can visit galleries around BC from the comfort of your living room! We also have virtual, pre-recorded, and in-person hands-on workshops – let’s make some art! - provided by teachers, Opus and Beau Photo. We also have workshops featuring the latest research in art education to get you thinking deeply about your practice. We also have some exclusive great deals and door prizes for registrants from Opus, Beau Photo, Curry’s, and Deserres. We love a great deal! Early Bird conference rates apply until September 21st we invite you to register NOW for this exciting conference! |
.png) |
Keynote - Sonny Assu: Dance As Though The Ancestors Are Watching
Interdisciplinary artist Sonny Assu will share his work and practice from the last 20 years, focusing on recent projects.
Sonny often infuses his work with wry humour and political statements to foster dialogue, speaking to the realities of being an Indigenous person in the colonial state of Canada.
His work deals with the loss of language, loss of cultural resources and the effects of colonization upon the Indigenous people of North America.
Speaker
-
Sonny Assu
Sonny Assu (Ligwiłda'xw of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nations) was raised in North Delta, BC, over 250 km away from his home ancestral home on Vancouver Island. Having been raised as your everyday average suburbanite, it wasn't until he was eight years old that he discovered his Kwakwaka'wakw heritage. Later in life, this discovery would be the conceptual focal point that helped launch his unique art practice.
Assu explores multiple mediums and materials to negotiate western and Kwakwaka'wakw principles of art-making. Often autobiographical, humorous, solemn and/or political, his diverse practice deals with the realities of being Indigenous in the colonial state of Canada.
Sonny received his BFA from the Emily Carr University in 2002 and was honoured with the University's distinguished alumni award, the Emily Award, in 2006. In 2017 he successfully defended his MFA thesis exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (We Come to Witness) for Concordia University.
Assu received a BC Creative Achievement Award in First Nations Art in 2011, has been named a Laureate for the Hnatyshyn Foundation's REVEAL - Indigenous Art Awards in 2017, and is an Eiteljorg Contemporary Arts Fellowship recipient for 2021.
Sonny's work has been accepted into The National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Eiteljorg Museum, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Guelph, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, The Seattle Art Museum, The Burke Museum, Audain Art Museum and in various other public and private collections across Canada, the United States and the UK.
After living and working in Vancouver and Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal), he has settled with his family in Æ›amÌ“atax̌ʷ (Campbell River, BC).