Visual Arts Thematic Residency - Get LIT! Language, Image, Text

Overview

Led by faculty Joi T. Arcand, Whess Harman, August Klintberg, and Michael Turner, Visual Arts Thematic Residency – Get LIT! Language, Image, Text invites visual artists working in all mediums to explore language, image, words, and text through self-directed studio practice and research-creation.

From the illuminated manuscripts of the Book of Kells to traditional Chinese art that combines poetry, calligraphy, and painting, words and language have existed in visual art for millennia as a way to construct meaning beyond, and in conjunction with, pictorial representation.

In René Magritte’s early conceptual painting of 1929, The Treachery of Images, a picture of a pipe sits above the sentence, Ceci n’est pas un pipe, calling into question the relationship, veracity, and slippage of meaning between text and image, representation and reality. In his manifesto of the same year, Les Mots et Les Images, he writes: “A word can replace an image in reality…in a picture, words have the same substances as images”.

Throughout the 20th century, the avant-garde embraced text and used it to reject mysticism, to revel in materiality, to revolt, to access the subconscious, to reflect society and the world around us, and to challenge the very notion of art itself.

In recent decades, words in art have been used by artists such as On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, and Ron Terada for social critique, political activism, personal narrative, and identity politics.

How are contemporary artists using words and language to disrupt, protest, fight, evoke, comment, critique, share, and communicate? Where do these conversations sit today?

Join us for a five-week residency in the mountains to delve into aspects of language in art.

What does the program offer?

This program offers a structured space where visual artists come together to create work and discuss the pertinent theme, as well as time and space to delve deeply into their practice while away from the constraints of everyday life. Through peer interaction, studio work, formal lectures, and studio visits from world-renowned visiting faculty, participants gain new ideas and insights that can be applied to creative exploration and professional development of their work.

Participants are provided with a studio, accessible 24 hours a day, as well as targeted access to our extensive facilities. Facility access is based on availability of facilitators, and priority access is given to those requesting their use in their initial application.

In addition, artists can build connections, create networks, and share their work with other artists-in-residence and the public.

Who should apply?

This residency is for visual artists at all stages of their careers who have completed formal education and/or training at the post-secondary level, or who have equivalent experience and recognition from their peers through informal, specialized training such as mentorships, self-study, and traditional knowledge and practices.

Banff Centre invites applications from anywhere in the world, and artists of all ages (18+), backgrounds, gender identities, and expressions.

Visual Arts Thematic Residency - Get LIT! Language, Image, Text  is generously supported by:

Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Program Endowment