Panel Discussion: The In-Between Art and Artists

Thursday, November 7, 2024
4:00 - 5:15 pm
Room 2M70 (second floor of Manitoba Hall), The University of Winnipeg
Please email us prior to October 30 if you plan to attend and require ASL interpretation.

Moderated by Dr. Sharanpal Ruprai

This will be a conversation with Laura Lewis and several of her subject-collaborators from Lewis's exhibition The In-Between as it relates to representations of queerness and each of their creative practices in the local arts community.

This event is presented in partnership with the University of Winnipeg Department of Women's and Gender Studies. We are also grateful for financial assistance from the Manitoba Arts Council.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR AND ARTISTS

Dr. Sharanpal Ruprai is a writer and Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg. Ruprai’s début poetry collection, Seva, was shortlisted for the Stephen G. Stephansson Award for Poetry by the Alberta Literary Awards in 2015, and her most recent collection, Pressure Cooker Love Bomb, was shortlisted for the prestigious 2020 Annual Lambda Literary Awards. As an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, her research and teaching interests include: indigenous and critical race feminism, religious and cultural studies and artistic practice. Currently, Ruprai is working on a collection of essays entitled Who You Calling a Kaur/Princess? By juxtaposing novels, plays, poetry collections, and films, the book explores issues such as religion, gender violence, and identity, within the specific context of the Canadian South Asian women’s experience.

Mahlet Cuff (b.1998) is an Afro-Caribbean queer femme born and based in Winnipeg Manitoba (Treaty 1). They are a multidisciplinary artist, curator, filmmaker, writer, film programmer, DJ, sound artist and arts cultural worker. Through a primarily lens-based arts practice, they are interested in themes of memory, erasure, Black feminist citational praxis and interrogating their own personal familial archives. They use photography and video as a way to look at the past, as a way to re-envision the present, and to create new futures. Cuff’s work has been exhibited in Winnipeg, Toronto, Windsor, New York and Milwaukee. Within their writing practice, they strive to make connections between contemporary art and socio-political issues. Cuff is interested in highlighting works by under-represented artists within the art canon. They have written pieces for BlackFlash, Peripheral Review, Cmag, Public Parking and Akimbo and Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts. Cuff's interest as a curator focuses on the ways that Black women and gender non-conforming artists are able to use critical fabulation as a way to understand themselves and their histories. She has curated work for Window Winnipeg, Take Home BIPOC arts house, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, The Dave Barber Cinematheque, the8fest, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Nocturne Festival, BlackFlash Expanded, and VTape. They have been on film juries for the Toronto Queer Film Festival, Reel Asian Film Festival, Gimli International Film Festival, Breakthroughs Film Festival and WNDX Moving Image Film Festival.

Christina Hajjar is a Lebanese artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Winnipeg on Treaty 1 Territory. Her practice considers intergenerational inheritance, domesticity, and place through diaspora, body archives, and cultural iconography. As a queer femme and first-generation subject, she is invested in the poetics of process, translation, and collaborative labour. Hajjar edits Herizons Magazine, Carnation Zine and qumra journal. She won a 2021 Broken Pencil Zine Award, 2020 PLATFORM Photography Award, and an honourable mention for the 2021 Emerging Digital Artists Award. Hajjar’s writing has appeared in BlackFlash Magazine, C Magazine, The Uniter, CV2, Prairie Fire, and PaperWait. Learn more at christinahajjar.com.

Jessie Jannuska is a Winnipeg-based visual artist and art workshop facilitator who received her BFA from Brandon University in 2018. She is mixed Dakota, Ojibway, and settler. Her family is from Canupawakpa Dakota Nation. Her chosen media include beadwork, acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, crankies, and murals. Jannuska’s work explores her Indigenous culture through a cathartic lens by blending realism, contemporary beadwork style, and symbolism representing Indigenous spirituality and healing. She utilizes themes of Indigenous female empowerment, commentary on Indigenous issues, and often features strong female role models. Her most recent award was the CAC Research and Creation grant in 2023.

Julian K (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Treaty One. His work explores inadequacy, queerness, trans identity, failure, and play! These ideas are often explored through humour and pushing the boundaries between personal and public.

Laura Lewis is a queer visual artist originally from Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia) currently based in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada). Her conceptual figurative painting practice explores philosophical questions concerning psychosexuality, the multiplicities of self, and nuances of the human condition. Lewis graduated in 2018 with a combined degree from NSCAD and the School of Art, University of Manitoba BFA Honours program. She is the founder and facilitator of Critical Painting Perspectives, presented by Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA). She has participated in artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, and in Civita Castellana, Italy. She was featured in the 2023 Painting issue of Border Crossings Magazine (interview by Robert Enright). In 2024 her work will be exhibited at various institutions across Canada including Modern Fuel, MAWA, aceartinc. and Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg.

Malaikah Rang’inya (she/ they) is a queer multidisciplinary performance artist currently based in Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg. Her work explores relational aesthetics through interactive public performances, installations, poetry, ritual and decorative arts. Weaving ideas of the self as the canvas, she seeks to bring healing to herself and her various communities through her practice. She has performed and exhibited at Partial View: A Cartae Open School Exhibition at aceartinc. in 2019. In 2023 she collaborated with Eve Tagny and Sappfyre Mcleod for Tagny’s exhibition As yet to be established at The Centre for Culture and Artistic Practices (C-CAP) in Winnipeg. Rang’inya also frequently performs at local queer institutions such as Club 200 through both drag and dance. She is a stage manager for Synonym Arts Consultation’s GORGE fest, an annual celebration of the legacy and future of 2SLGBTQIA+ art and drag, based in Winnipeg. Rang’inya has collaborated with numerous local artists for over a decade on countless projects including films, photoshoots, and public performances.

GETTING HERE AND ACCESSIBILITY
Maps of The University of Winnipeg campus, including accessibility and parking maps, can be found at https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/maps/. Room 2M70 is located on the second floor of Manitoba Hall, marked with an "M" on the campus map. Accessible, street level visitor entrances with auto door openers and ramps are via Portage Avenue, Ellice Avenue and Spence Street. The nearest elevator access is beside the Ellice Avenue entrance doors. There are gendered, accessible washrooms twenty feet from 2M70 and there is a gender-neutral washroom inside room 2M70.