Indigenous Art Intensive

This month-long residency gathers students, artists, curators, writers and scholars to engage in contemporary ideas and discourse—a place for new ideas rooted in Indigenous art-making.

Zine making workshop

UBC Okanagan’s Indigenous Art Intensive offers an educational series of courses, lectures, art shows, and opportunities to create art. It features a series of world-renowned speakers, a variety of related undergraduate and graduate credit courses, and a group of resident artists who will be working to create a new body of work.

The 2023 Indigenous Art Intensive is being planned as an in-person program.

Visit the Indigenous Art Intensive Blog for details for the visiting artists, keynote presenters and events, as well as information on previous years.

Indigenous Art Intensive Blog

Courses – May to June, 2023

Alongside the intensive residency, FCCS is offering additional courses in visual art, creative writing, and Indigenous studies. These will run in conjunction with the Indigenous Intensive with varying degrees of crossover, providing students the opportunity to connect with the keynote speakers and the resident artists. All courses are offered in Term 1, May 15 to Jun 22, 2023.

Visual Art

VISA 460/520 | Indigenous Praxis

Instructor: Tania Willard

Multidisciplinary seminar dealing with various approaches and issues in contemporary creative praxis as relating to the disciplines of Visual Arts, Indigenous Studies, Media Arts, Creative Writing, and Performance. Students will be expected to develop creative work and/or a written reflective text or performance.

Tania Willard, of Secwépemc and settler heritage, works within the shifting ideas around contemporary and traditional, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Public Art projects include, Rule of the Trees, a public art project at Commercial Broadway sky train station, in Vancouver BC and If the Drumming Stops, with artist Peter Morin, on the lands of the Papaschase First Nation in Edmonton, AB. Willard’s ongoing collaborative project BUSH gallery, is a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledges and relational art practices.

Creative Writing

CRWR 470 | Portfolio

Instructor: Troy Sebastian

Intensive manuscript production in one or two major genres: fiction, poetry, drama, or creative non-fiction.

Troy Sebastian |nupqu ʔak·ǂam̓ is a writer from the Ktunaxa community of ʔaq̓am. He is a doctoral student, Vanier Scholar and Sessional Instructor in the University of Victoria’s Department of Writing. His story tax niʔ pikak̓— a long time ago– was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Short Story Prize and the 2019 Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. In 2020 he was selected as a Writer’s Trust Rising Star and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. He has published with The Walrus, The Malahat Review, The Globe and Mail and Prairie Fire. He is represented by Rachel Letofsky at CookeMcDermid.

Art History

ARTH 460 | Indigenous Contemporary Art

Instructor: Stacey Koosel

Dr. Stacey May Koosel is a Métis writer, lecturer, curator of UBC Okanagan Gallery and coordinator of the Indigenous Art Intensive. She teaches courses on art history, curation and Indigenous contemporary art history at the University of Alberta and UBC Okanagan. She is passionate about art history and contemporary art, with a focus on decolonisation practices, Indigenous art and art publishing.

Indigenous Studies

Course TBC

Registration

The program is open to UBC students, students from other universities and those who have a previous university degree.

UBC Students Unclassified Students

Western Dean’s Agreement Students Visiting Students