M:ST's 10th Anniversary Biennial of embodied art practice is only ten months away! To celebrate, M:ST is connecting eight local and global arts organizations to host a series of month long residency exchanges leading up to the Biennial in September 2020.
Gathering itself around specific histories, environments, identities, and bodies, the 10th Biennial will witness and consider “the local” in the context of entangled and interdependent global relations. Taking part are new friends and co-presenters, RAVY Bienniale (Yaoundé, Cameroun), Asiatopia (Bangkok, Thailand), Kamias Special Projects (Quezon City, Philippines), and Catalyst Arts (Belfast, N. Ireland), and old friends Stride Gallery, The New Gallery, TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary, and Untitled Art Society- all of whom have worked with us to curate an outstanding cohort of M:ST 10 Biennial artists!
All eight artists will be sent on a fully funded Residency and provided with unique exploration and presentation opportunties based on their Residency location. Today we are thrilled to announce the first four Artists: KC Wei, Landry Mbassi, Stephanie Comilang, and Halie Finney!
Casey Wei/KC Wei is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and writer based in Vancouver. Her practice has evolved from filmmaking (Murky Colors (2012), Vater und Sohn / Father and Son / 父与子 (2013)), into works that cross over between art, music, and the community at large (Kingsgate Mall Happenings (2014), Chinatown Happenings (2015), the Karaoke Music Video Free Store (2017), the art rock? concert series (2015-2018), which resulted in her latest film, art rock? The Popular Esoteric (2018)). In 2016, she began Agony Klub, a music and printed matter label that releases material under the framework of the “popular esoteric.” The label has 21 releases to date, including a bi-annual magazine+mixtape, AK, featuring local and international collaborators. She plays in the music projects Kamikaze Nurse, hazy, and Painting, and sometimes produces music videos and texts under the alias Karen Zolo. She is co-founder and contributor of STILLS: moving image tract with Steffanie Ling, and has written texts for Blank Cheque Press, C Magazine, grunt gallery, and VIVO Media Art Centre, where she works as Video Out Distribution. Upcoming Agonyklub projects for 2020 include AK07, a Painting EP, Kamikaze Nurse’s sophomore LP, a poetry anthology titled, Friend Poems, and the collected Isn't it Pip? comic strip series (no. 1-100) by Justin Gradin and Doug Wideen.
@kxixic | @agonyklub | agonyklub.com | kamikazenurse.bandcamp.com
KC will be hosted by the Directors of Asiatopia in Thailand where she will be traveling, lecturing, and performing throughout the country from November 17 - December 14.
Landry Mbassi is a visual artist, curator, and art critic based in Yaoundé, Cameroun. As an artist, his practice focuses on photography, video, installation, and new media. Since 2008, he has been one of the curators of RAVY (Rencontres d’arts visuels de Yaoundé), Yaoundé’s visual art biennial. There he has recently been named Artistic Director, after inheriting the position from Olivier Fokoua.
Landry initiated the YaPhoto project and is a founding member of Collectif Kamera, a collective of young Camerounian photographers that began in 2011 to promote photography as an art form in its own right. Through his first collective ATAC (Other Territories of Contemporary Art), created in 2010, he developed an engaging new space for the expression, creation, and dissemination of contemporary art in Yaoundé. Landry has also organized several exhibitions by emerging visual artists at the French Institute (Institut Français du Cameroun – Yaoundé) including: Rostand Pokam: L’esthétique de la Couleur (2012); Yvon Ngassam: Le temps du voyage (2013); and Antanasius Vershiyi: Me-n-tal symphony (2014).
In May 2017, he curated the inaugural exhibition of the renovated Galerie d’Art Contemporain in Yaoundé. He was recently invited to Brazzaville, Congo to curate the 8th edition of RIAC (Rencontre internationale de l’art contemporain). His current project is Itinérances efferverscentes, a new visual arts festival supported by Ruinart that aims bring new audiences and gazes to Cameroun.
Landry has been selected by RAVY Bienniale to be hosted by M:ST in Calgary, and traveling throughout Alberta in 2020.
Stephanie Comilang is an artist living and working between Toronto and Berlin. She received her BFA from Ontario College of Art & Design. Her documentary based works create narratives that look at how our understandings of mobility, capital and labour on a global scale are shaped through various cultural and social factors. Her work has been shown at Ghost : 2561 Bangkok Video & Performance Triennale, S.A.L.T.S Basel, UCLA, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Asia Art Archive in America, New York.
@ilocos.bitch
Stephanie has been selected by Stride Gallery to be hosted by Kamias Special Projects during the 3rd Kamias Triennial in February, 2020.
Halie Finney is an emerging Metis artist currently based in Edmonton, Alberta. She received her degree from the Alberta University of Art and Design in 2017 where she majored in drawing, she also graduated from MacEwan University in 2014 with a diploma in fine arts. Born and raised in the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta, Halie holds a strong connection to the area, specifically to her hometown of Canyon Creek, a quiet hamlet consisting of approximately 260 people, a harbour, a beach, some sheep, a Winks, and a bar. She understands her Metis heritage through memories told to her by generations of her family who still reside there and through the unchanged characteristics of her home's landscape and lifestyle.
When a loved one passes on, their stories and memories go with them. In order to simplify the difficult emotions that inevitable death and change bring Halie has created a mythology of characters living in a fantasy world that mirrors Canyon Creek. There is a bear named Francis, a bat named Fauphur, a dog named Fred, a ghost named Loonette, a House spirit, and more. The creatures appear regularly throughout her work and exist in their own non-linear, idiosyncratic narratives expressed through animations, costumes, drawings, paintings, performances and other objects.
@haliefinney
Halie has been selected by The New Gallery hosted by Catalyst Arts in Northern Ireland through out April and May 2020.
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More to come!
Stay tuned over the coming months as we share more exciting artist announcements, biennial dates, and residency updates. Follow us on your social media platform of choice, or bookmark our website:
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