After a year of work developing the conceptual framework for a travelling exhibition for the Transformative Memory International Netowrk (TMIN), GRSJ PhD students Alejandra Gaviria-Serna and David Ng recently received the BC Arts Impact Grant to design and produce the Transformative Memory Exhibit in Vancouver in 2025.
The proposal for a traveling exhibit emerged from a series of exchanges and collaborations produced by the TMIN in Uganda, Ireland, Canada, Indonesia, and Colombia. These gatherings and partnerships invited artists, activists, and scholars to share and learn about memory work in different spaces, generating multi-disciplinary artworks that included songs, videos, posters, installations, performances, and tapestries.
The Transformative Memory traveling exhibit is based on the proposal to curate this body of artworks collaboratively with local grassroots organizations where the exhibit will take place. The exhibition is envisioned as a device to enable collective conversation, reflection, and critical engagement toward collective action to make interventions on structural, colonial, and state violence such as dictatorships, war, genocide, chattel slavery and settler colonialism.
The Vancouver exhibit will be co-curated by with Butterflies in Spirit and will include performances, panels and gestures from local artists as well as pieces from creators from Uganda, Indonesia, Indigenous territories worldwide, Colombia, and Canada, among others.
About Butterflies in Spirit
Butterflies in Spirit is a dance group made up of Indigenous women who are activists and performers advocating for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-spirit people in Canada (MMIWG2+). They are survivors and family members of MMIWG2+ who work to raise awareness about the injustices and discrimination faced by Indigenous Peoples. They channel their sadness and power into collective action against violence and, in their presentations, mix contemporary, decolonial, Indigenous dance and hip-hop.
