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Rosalie Favell 'Facing the Camera'

Rosalie Favell, Candice Hopkins, Banff, Alberta; Nadia Myre, Banff, Alberta; Tania Willard, Banff, Alberta; all 2008, from the series, Facing the Camera, 2008-2018.

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Featuring works primarily selected from Banff Centre’s permanent collection, Facing Photographs will run from February 14 to May 4, 2025. 

BANFF, AB, February 12, 2025 – After months of renovations and public closure, Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity reopens with an exhibition presented in partnership with Exposure Photography Festival. Facing Photographs, organized by Jacqueline Bell, Curator of Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre, runs from February 14 to May 4, 2025 with an opening reception on Thursday, February 13 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Central to the works that comprise Facing Photographs is the series Facing the Camera by Rosalie Favell, celebrated Winnipeg-born artist of Métis heritage. The series was initiated by Favell while on residence at Banff Centre in 2008 where, in the company other Indigenous artists, she sought to create a document of this group. Facing the Camera later grew to include over five hundred individual portraits of Indigenous artists and arts workers in Canada, Australia and the United States. Facing Photographs presents 13 works from the series in Banff Centre’s permanent collection, depicting the residency cohort and visiting artists at Banff Centre.

Building upon the ideas present in Favell’s series, Facing Photographs brings together works in photography, video and other media that take up questions of agency in relation to self-representation, or representations of those who share with the artist’s forms of identification or social world. The presented works engage with photography’s entanglement with colonialism, refuse fixed understandings of identity, or reflect modes of self-representation.

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Three women in beehives look at the camera
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Alongside portraits from Favell’s series, Facing the Camera, the exhibition includes works by Lori Blondeau, Cassils, Allyson Clay, Anna Binta Diallo, John Edmonds, Evergon, Logan MacDonald, Nadia Myre, Shelley Niro, Barbara Spohr, and Jin-me Yoon.

Audiences of Facing Photographs may also be interested in an upcoming artist talk with Filipino Canadian photo-based artist Karen Zalamea, winner of the 2025 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award for Photography, on Friday, February 28 at 4 p.m. Zalamea will speak to her broader practice and the series Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas) (2024-ongoing) that she will continue while on residency at Banff Centre.

Facing Photographs
Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
107 Tunnel Mtn Drive, Banff
February 14 –May 4, 2025
FREE
Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 13, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

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Facing Photographs is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada and Government of Alberta.

For more information on Banff Centre’s Visual Arts training and development opportunities, visit banffcentre.ca/visual-arts. To find out more about Walter Phillips Gallery exhibitions, please visit banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery.

Interviews are available with:

  • Jacqueline Bell - Acting Director, Visual Arts and Curator, Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre
  • Josephine Ridge - Executive Director, Arts at Banff Centre

For photos, information or interview requests, please contact:


Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca

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About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

Founded in 1933, Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become a global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines, from the fine arts to Indigenous Wise Practices. From our home in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus - artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences - to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca

 

About Walter Phillips Gallery

Walter Phillips Gallery is exclusively committed to the production, presentation, collection and analysis of contemporary art and curatorial practice. For contemporary artists, particularly those engaged in alternative forms of practice, Walter Phillips Gallery remains an essential and principal site where art is presented to an audience for critical reception. banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery

Image Credits:

  1. Rosalie Favell, Candice Hopkins, Banff, Alberta; Nadia Myre, Banff, Alberta; Tania Willard, Banff, Alberta; all 2008, from the series, Facing the Camera, 2008-2018.
  2. Shelley Niro, Mohawks in Beehives, 1991. Collection of Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity P96 0073 P
Media Release
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Submitted by Kate King Wale… on
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Headshot of Quinn Czejkowski

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Quinn Czejkowski (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist exploring movement, costumes, floral design, and tattooing. Based in Brooklyn, they are intensely curious about how we move, dress, treat, adorn, and otherwise ascribe meaning and identity to and from our bodies. Most recently, they were constructing costumes for the new immersive show, Life & Trust. Past and future collaborators include: Helen Simoneau, Adrienne Westwood, Kimberly Bartosik, Jen Rosenblit, among others.

Costume Design
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Image of a marionette of wonderful Joe and his dog
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Created and performed by Ronnie Burkett
Page Summary
Ronnie Burkett brings Wonderful Joe to Banff with his signature stunning puppetry, laugh-out-loud humour, and masterful performance.

Submitted by Dolson Rhona on
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Headshot of Anusree Roy

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Anusree is a Governor General’s Award-nominated and four-time Dora Award-winning writer, actor, and director.

For theatre, Anusree’s plays include: Through the Eyes of God, Sisters, Trident Moon, Little Pretty and The Exceptional, Sultans of the Street, Brothel # 9, Roshni, Letters to my Grandma, and Pyaasa. She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award, the RBC Emerging Artist Award, the Carol Bolt Award and the Siminovitch Protégé Prize. She was the 2018 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (the largest and oldest playwriting prize for women writing for English-speaking theatre). Currently, she is the commissioned playwright at Tarragon Theatre, writing her new play, 147, 8th Street. Anusree is presently developing a feature film inspired by her audio play, Sisters, as well as directing and premiering her short films, The Birthday Party and God’s Plan (winner of Best Performance & Best Editing at WIFF). She is also an adjunct professor of playwriting at the University of Toronto and a professor of creative writing, teaching advanced drama to MFA students, at the University of British Columbia.

Anusree's playwright residencies include: Nightwood Theatre, Young People's Theatre, Factory Theatre, The Blyth Festival, Theatre Passe Muraille, The Canadian Stage Company and Tarragon Theatre. Anusree spent two seasons as an actor at the Stratford Festival of Canada. She holds a B.A. from York University and an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and most of her plays have been published by Playwrights Canada Press. 
 

Dolson Rhona
Description

Join us for an insightful conversation with Dr. T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss as part of the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series. In this session titled Decolonial Love, Wyss will explore how love is a guiding force in their 30+ years of interdisciplinary practice. Through a deep connection to land-based knowledge, digital media, and storytelling, Wyss weaves love into their work—whether through the gifts of the land, the act of sharing stories, or the ways creative practice can encourage love to grow in everyday life.

Facilitated by Janine Windolph, Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre, the session includes a presentation by Wyss followed by a discussion and a Q&A. This conversation will be recorded and shared following the event, but the Q&A portion will remain unrecorded. Sessions may share experiences and ask difficult questions.

About the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series

The Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series is a bi-monthly conversation session inviting leading Indigenous Art creators to discuss their practices and processes. The series engages an Indigenous lens across various art forms, including Literary Arts, Film and Media Arts, Digital Media, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts such as Theatre, Dance, and Music. These sessions offer a space to explore and deepen your understanding of how Indigenous artists use their disciplines as tools to decolonize artistic processes and creation.

Visit the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series page to access recordings of previous talks and learn more about upcoming sessions.

Headshot of Dr T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss
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Dr. T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss explores Decolonial Love, weaving land-based knowledge, digital media, and storytelling into their interdisciplinary practice.
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Free
Yes
Donation
Off
Banff Centre Artist/Practicum/Staff Only
Off
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Off
Age Restrictions
Ages 14 and Over
Performance Date
Date
Expandable Content

Biography

Dr T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss

Sḵwx̱wú7mesh/Sto:Lo/Hawaiian/Swiss

Dr T'uy't'tanat- Cease Wyss is an interdisciplinary artist who works with digital media, writing, performance and land based remediations as her multidisciplinary arts practice. She is a community engaged and public artist, Indigi-Futurisms developer/artist, land based artist and ethnobotanist/permaculture designer.

She is currently expanding on her research with wild mushrooms as not only a means for remediation of soil areas damaged by industry, colonialism, and other toxic waste, but as means of healing our bodies, minds, spirits and to go further and expand in to bringing their healing sounds out through biosonification through modular synthesizers. Wyss is working on bridging the languages of plants and mushroom as well as other forms of fungi, with indigenous languages and creating conversations between them all.

Her works range over 30+ years and have always focused on sustainability, permaculture techniques, Coast Salish Cultural elements and have included themes of ethnobotany, indigenous language revival, Salish weaving and digital media technology.

In 2022 Cease was awarded an honorary PhD from ECUAD and was also awarded the MST [Musqueam/Skwxwu7mesh/Tseil watuth: aka Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəyə̓ m, and səlí̓lwətaʔɬ Lands WatersSkwxwú7mesh Uxi̱mixw̱ '] AiR fieldhouse in Stanley Park for the next 3 years. She will be infusing all elements of her diverse practice into this time spent reconnecting to her ancestors whose spirits remain a part of this forest and shoreline.

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1742432400

Submitted by Kate King Wale… on
English
Headshot of Sylvie Moquin

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Sylvie Moquin is a dance artist, mother, performer, choreographer, rehearsal director and educator based out of Calgary, Alberta (Mohkinstsis). She is the Co-Artistic Director of Project InTandem, a creation and production platform to propel opportunities for artists in Canada.

She received her BFA in Performance Dance from the Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), and has been working professionally in the field for over ten years.

As a dancer, she has worked extensively with various individual artists and companies, including Karissa Barry, Laja Field of LajaMartin, Meghann Michalsky, Davida Monk, J-Sik Movements, kloetzel&co, Rock Bottom Movement, Corps Bara Dance Theatre, Dancers’ Studio West - Lab Emerging Artist Program, Pam Tzeng, Dancing Monkey Laboratories, and has performed in shows such as Dance: made in Canada, Ignite! Festival, Alberta Dance Festival, Dance Action Lab (DSW), Brian Webb Dance Series (Edmonton), Stream of Dance Festival (Regina), and the Fluid Festival (Calgary), among others.

She has showcased her choreographic works in a variety of festivals and platforms, including the Chutzpah! Festival, Jeanne & Peter Lougheed Performing Arts Centre, Project InTandem & the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks PTP Program. Most recently, she was the selected artist for the Special Creative Residency with Dancers’ Studio West where she expanded upon her choreographic research and mounted a new work for the TransFoRM series at the University of Calgary.

Photo Credit: Suzanne Nolan

Rehearsal Assistant

Submitted by Sonia Zyvatkau… on
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Illia Ovcharenko

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When he was 6-years-old and living in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Illia Ovcharenko’s mother took him to hear a performance of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. After the concert, Illia told his mother he wanted to be a pianist when he grew up. 

Today, just a dozen years later, Illia Ovcharenko is one of the world’s most celebrated young pianists, playing concerts all over the world. 

Most recently, he won the Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, Canada—a competition that seeks to identify the “Complete Artist”—someone who demonstrates technical mastery, perseverance against adversity, and an understanding of musical text that is both intellectual and emotional. He’s also won top prizes at the Busoni and Horowitz competitions. 

He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Orchestre National d’Île de France, the Orchestra of La Monnaie, the Toronto Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, and the Jerusalem and Haifa Symphony Orchestras, in recital at venues and Festivals including Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Sendesaal in Hannover, Robert-Schumann-Saal in Düsseldorf, Salle Bourgie. Highlights of the 2024-25 season include debuts with the Israel Philharmonic, Deutsche-Symphonie Orchester, I Pomerrigi Musicali, Edmonton Symphony and San Antonio Philharmonic, while recitals include the Konzerthaus Berlin, the ‘Folle Journee’ Warsaw, the Kissinger Olymp, Dubai Opera, Salle Cortot, Music Toronto and Shenandoah University. The season will also see the release of two recital albums, on the ‘Discauvers’ and Steinway labels.

Guest Faculty

Submitted by Kate King Wale… on
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Headshot of Angelica Negron

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Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón (she/her) writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, Prototype Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, the Louisville Orchestra and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Angélica received an early education in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where she later studied composition under the guidance of composer Alfonso Fuentes. She holds a master’s degree in music composition from New York University where she studied with Pedro da Silva and pursued doctoral studies at The Graduate Center (CUNY), where she studied composition with Tania León. Also active as an educator, Angélica is currently a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. She has collaborated with artists like Sō Percussion, Lido Pimienta, Mathew Placek, Sasha Velour, Cecilia Aldarondo, Mariela Pabón & Adrienne Westwood, among others and is a founding member of the tropical electronic band Balún. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at WNYC’s The Greene Space working on El Living Room, a 4-part offbeat variety show and playful multimedia exploration of sound and story, of personal history and belonging. She was the recipient of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Upcoming premieres include works for the Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative and multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.

Composer
Description

Join us for an evening of compelling nonfiction and long-form journalism readings, hosted by esteemed faculty Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood. This free event features writers from the Literary Journalism Environmental Writers Residency, sharing their work on nature, the environment, and the world around us.

This reading offers a rare opportunity to hear from emerging voices as they test and refine their material before a live audience. With diverse backgrounds and experiences, these writers bring unique perspectives that enlighten, engage, and inspire.

The Literary Journalism: Environmental Writing program is supported by the Rogers Communications Chair in Literary Journalism Endowment Fund.

Literary arts reading
Page Summary
Writers from the Literary Journalism Environmental Writers Residency share nonfiction on nature and the world around us. Hosted by Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood.
Exhibition
No
Free
Yes
Donation
Off
Banff Centre Artist/Practicum/Staff Only
Off
Licensed
Off
Age Restrictions
14 +
Performance Date
Date
Computed Sort Date
1741312800
Description

Join us for an evening of compelling nonfiction and long-form journalism, hosted by esteemed faculty Denise Balkissoon. This free event features writers from the Literary Journalism Environmental Writers Residency, sharing their work on nature, the environment, and the world around us.

This reading offers a rare opportunity to hear from emerging voices as they test and refine their material before a live audience. With diverse backgrounds and experiences, these writers bring unique perspectives that enlighten, engage, and inspire.

The Literary Journalism: Environmental Writing program is supported by the Rogers Communications Chair in Literary Journalism Endowment Fund.

Literary arts reading
Page Summary
Writers from the Literary Journalism Environmental Writers Residency share compelling nonfiction on nature and the world around us. Hosted by Denise Balkissoon.
Exhibition
No
Free
Yes
Donation
Off
Banff Centre Artist/Practicum/Staff Only
Off
Licensed
Off
Age Restrictions
14 +
Performance Date
Date
Computed Sort Date
1741140000
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