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Kathleen Vaughan • You Are Here | Vous êtes ici

Vernissage: Thurs. Mar. 5, 6 – 8 pm
Gallery Tour: Thurs. Mar. 5, 5 – 6 pm
Catalogue Launch: Thurs. Mar. 5, 6 pm
Virtual Podcast Launch (online): Mon. Oct. 5, 5 pm
Exhibition: March 6 to 24, 2020 – August 25 to 29, 2020

You Are Here|Vous Êtes Ici is a solo exhibition and series of related events by Canadian artist Kathleen Vaughan, featuring tactile, colourful textile maps created over the past 15 years. The exhibition uses visual art and storytelling to elaborate connections between place and belonging, with an environmental slant. Emphasized are works about parks and greenspaces in Montreal, an urban forest in Toronto and environments in Iceland and Norway. Maps are a means to evoke place without using pictorial traditions. Maps also help bring to life questions of power, partiality and exclusions that are embedded in all forms of representation. At the same time, maps are cross-cultural, familiar and easily understood, and so an accessible format for diverse audiences.
Worked in textiles, these art pieces explore the meaning of materials through an aesthetic and ethical engagement with place, and raise questions about sustainable art practices. Recognizing that we live in devastating times of climate breakdown and mass extinctions worldwide, with a dwindling amount of time to make the transformative change that might slow irrevocable species and habitat loss, Vaughan’s works reflect on and respond to these realities, aiming to motivate connection to and advocacy for our beautiful planet. An illustrated, full-color catalogue extends the reflections evoked by the exhibition.

Kathleen Vaughan (MFA, PhD) is an artist, educator and academic with a trans-disciplinary orientation to questions of place and belonging. In both studio and community projects, she balances her love for post-industrial sites, urban forests and green spaces with critical engagement, and often uses walking and mapping as method and form. Her work includes digital and hand embroidery, textile piecing, photography, painting, drawing, audio, video and text, and increasingly integrates sustainably-produced and biodegradable materials. She is the Concordia University Research Chair in Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies and Associate Professor of Art Education. More about her work can be found at akaredhanded.com and re-imagine.ca.

Kathleen Vaughan Installation shot

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