We think that we must hide in our shadows, that they are the darkest parts of our hearts. What if tending to your shadows actually was an opportunity to see and feel more of your light? We believe that an essential part of healing is being witnessed in truth. We invite you to share your shadow, so that you can be held in your light. Through way of story, dance and music we bear witness to authentic ways of being.
In partnership with East Village BIA
Featuring
Haleluya Hailu + (their fake friends), izzy cenedese, Judith Camacho Campoy and Enable Arts Society
MC
Heather Lamoureux and Soleilla Denomme
6:00 PM | Opening Welcome with Senaqwila Wyss
6:10 PM | Haleluya Hailu + (their fake friends) – eternally, yours
Haleluya Hailu is reclaiming the Manic Pixie Dream Girl with the release of "eternally, yours". Named for the classic arthouse film "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind", "eternally, yours" features a vibrant and sparkling collection of alternative-minded tracks that effortlessly straddle emo, punk, and pop.
6:40 PM | Cameron Davidson/TheMangyCalf – The Only Thing Drier Than This Lecture Is Your Burning Forests
The Only Thing Drier Than This Lecture Is Your Burning Forests is a musical composition to be performed on drum kit, accompanying harmonic instrument, and voice. Derived from a lecture opposing the glorification of hierarchical arrangements in the techno-capitalist era. Whether derived from colonial capitalist models or from more traditional social realities, hierarchy has a tendency to base access to power on the most unfortunate of personal approaches and the most leeching and pathetic of human behaviours which reduce our chances of constructing a survivable post-capitalist world.
6:55 PM | Enable Arts
Enable: Arts Society is a organization with a mandate to uplift collaborative and community-based art projects by marganalized or emerging artists. The multidiciplinary artists of Enable are focused on cultivating art practices that focus on play and process based exploration over the need to produce perfect products. They have participated in projects like Masi Medicine (Exhibit 2023 Surrey Art Gallery X 5X Art Party Installation), and Enable Play: a workshop series funded by Community Arts YVR, among others. They are focused on the healing nature of art, and creating new rituals that will inspire and create new spells of hope.
7:20 PM | June Hawthorn
A set of songs from June Hawthorn’s album, “breaker” (2024).
7:45 PM | from our roots to yours
from our roots to yours is a QTBIPOC collaborative call-and-response art project based on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh) lands. this project is co-facilitated by phebe ferrer and jessamine liu, 2 uninvited settlers and QTBIPOC artists.
our current community is made up of 12 QTBIPOC artists from illustrators to ceramicists, filmmakers to poets, and many more! our project theme centres around relationships to land, landback futures, and land-based practices. in our workshops together, we’ve co-created spaces to (re)imagine, dream, and make art together about our ancestral and familial histories, our ever-changing and interconnected relationships to land and each other, and how collaboration and community are not just between ‘human entities’ but with land, history, art, our ancestors, nature, and more. the art featured as part of vines festival are a few of the many pieces created by the artists participating in this project. we will soon launch an online curation of all the art pieces made in the project!
8:05 PM | izzy cenedese – monotony
a collection of songs written over the past while.
8:35 PM | Judith Colibrí – ROOTS
ROOTS, is a work in progress. It is a search for connection and research of my roots. Short choreographies inspired by ancestral ritual dances combined with contemporary dance. It arises from the concept of re-indigenization and the need to return to the wisdom of our roots, to find balance and walk in more harmony with ourselves and the world.
8:55 PM | mitcholos
mitcholos łapḥsp̓at̓unakʔi łim̓aqsti (a mind with wings) is yuułuʔiłʔatḥ x maa~nulth treaty (2011) x nuučaan̓uɫatḥ. in 2015, mitcholos debuted as a poet at the talking stick festival, in two their shows 'indigenuity' and 'from talking stick to microphone'. in 2017, mitcholos graduated the spoken word program at the banff centre for creativity and arts. in the same year they were made a poet of honor as a 'rising voice' at the canadian festival of spoken word. in 2018, mitcholos competed in poetry slam, advancing as one of the team members representing vancouver poetry slam. alongside kay kassirer, rabbit richards, and jaye simpson they advanced to the finals stage to place 3rd in the country. in 2021, mitcholos wrote a poem for the short film 'johnny crow' directed by xstine cook and illustrated by jesse gouchey. the film is still circulating film festivals, receiving awards, and is available to stream on cbcgem.
9:15 PM | Hampton and Jarah Femi
Hampton (they/them) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, rapper, and multidisciplinary artist who has been making music their entire life. Their voice has been described as a cross between Moses Sumney and Brittney Howard and their music is predominantly composed on a Loop pedal using whatever instruments (or objects!) they can find.
Their art is informed by their experiences living as a mixed, Black, trans, neurodivergent, disabled person and speaks to the oppressive violence enacted in our current colonial and capitalist social systems. The work is based in a constant critique of themselves, their community, and society at large.
Jarah Femi: I make music because I have to, and lucky for me it turns into really beautiful stuff sometimes. I've been making art since a little baby and never stopped. The sounds and sights of life are puzzling but I enjoy them, and I like making music that can help people find a moment of peace when the sounds and sights of life hurt. I love watching art grow into new things. Ideally I can add some good art to the evolving world. I hope you can feel free to let go of some shit when you see me perform.
Bel Sihan Chen – Flow
This work is a memoryscape of grieving forgotten and erased relationships with land. Employing the motif of traditional Chinese calligraphy style mountains, I reconstruct the architecture of my memory in relationship to land with non-traditional materials to insert myself as an active agent in negotiating this connection. The contrast between the zen of calligraphy practice to the inherent errors and breakages in the charcoal line represents the multiplicities of modes within my practice with land - it is a meditation, a wandering, a mourning, a stumble, a ritual, an act of creation. The flowing of one line to the next, one shade to the next, and one mountain to the next establishes a fractal mirroring of the microcosm and the macrocosm. This imagery invites you to consider the flow of macrocosmic histories, and microcosmic moments from one to another. What is remembered are the marks emphasized, not the interludes of silence and erasure in between. Reflecting on archival and generational loss, the presence of absence dynamically constructs the form of what is present in our journeys to find ourselves within these histories.
I’ve never seen mountains in 河南 (Henan, China) myself.
Kayla Black – Ondaadizi Aki (She is born from the Land)
Inspiration created in collaboration with the From Our Roots To Yours: Land Back Project. Lead gracefully by Jessa & Phebe.
Monica Cheema – And Everything Between
A short visual poem reflecting on land, labor and resource extraction. Original poetry by Jessamine Liu. Translated to Punjabi by my mom.
Divya – Grounding
"Grounding" (shot on DV mini) is a video piece featuring footage of both expansive and intimate local landscapes, alongside scenes of my own body engaged in nervous system regulation techniques. The work seeks to investigate the concept of home, in terms of geographic place, the sense of belonging within one's own body, and how the 2 inform one another -- exploring the inner landscapes we carry within ourselves.
Soleilla Denomme
Wendy the Witch
Wendy the Witch (They/Her) is a settler with Ukrainian, British, and Scottish ancestry, living on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Wendy identifies as neurodivergent, queer, and non-binary. As an Artist, Wendy explores themes of light, contrast and colour through a variety of mediums. These include but are not limited to: fibre art, digital media, comedy writing, and energetics. Wendy uses these mediums to make statements that are intentionally bold yet simultaneously subjective to each individual. They intend to embody a quirky and colourful style in their work to ignite a multi-dimensional experience.
