Join us on September 13 at 1 pm for an artist talk by Emily Neufeld in East Campus Hall 1239 (UWAG). The talk is presented in combination with Emily's exhibition, Prairie Invasions: A Homecoming. in the UWAG gallery which opens September 12 from 5 to 8 pm.
Emily Neufeld, Prairie Invasions: A Hymn (detail), 2022, photo-mural. Photo courtesy of the artist.
"In 2018, Vancouver-based artist Emily Neufeld travelled with her partner and 10-year-old son through the Prairies – the previous home of her Mennonite grandmother – investigating the abandoned farmhouses built by settler migrants in the 19th century.
At each site, Neufeld observed the material and affective traces of past lives through the discarded objects within these derelict structures. She also performed subtle interventions either within or around each house, adding to the historical lineage of domestic and agricultural labour across Alberta and Saskatchewan." (Emily Neufeld - Galleries West)
Emily Neufeld received her BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2013. She lives and works on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples in what is currently named North Vancouver. She is committed to examining her Mennonite and Scottish settler colonial histories in understanding her relationship to this place as Indigenous land. Recent solo exhibitions include Prairie Invasions: A Hymn (2022, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, AB), Before Demolition: Tides (2019, Eyelevel Gallery, NS), Motherlands (The Pole, Den Haag, ND), and Before Demolition (2017, Burrard Arts Foundation, BC). The artist participates in community sharing gardens, and sees soil and labour as fundamental to her research process.