Toward Future Bodies Symposium

The Gardiner Museum is pleased to host Toward Future Bodies, a symposium supported by the Raphael Yu Centre for Canadian Ceramics, and in collaboration with A-B Projects. The symposium takes place during the International Ceramic Art Fair (ICAF) and will feature a roster of local and international speakers, fostering a deeper appreciation for Canadian ceramics within a larger artistic ecosystem through discussions on the body in relation to the land, home, animals, the machine, and the future.

Your symposium ticket includes lunch and refreshments on June 10. For an additional $25, add unlimited ICAF admission and access to all ICAF tours to your symposium ticket. This offer applies to Symposium attendees only.

Become a Gardiner Friend to save on this event and enjoy a full year of unlimited Museum admission, discounts on clay classes, and more privileges.

Schedule

Friday June 9, 6 – 8 pm
Keynote Presentation by Nicole Seisler
Nicole Seisler is a Los Angeles-based ceramic artist whose tripod practice comprises making, educating, and curating. Her sculpture, installations, and public art investigate time, materiality, process, psychology, and the overlapping roles of artist/viewer/participant/collaborator. As Founder and Director of the Los Angeles contemporary ceramics platform A-B Projects, Seisler has curated over thirty exhibitions and offers alternative educational programming that reevaluates and redefines the trajectory of contemporary ceramics.

Saturday June 10, 9:30 am – 6 pm
A full day symposium featuring speakers, panel discussions, and hands-on clay activity guided by the host. Lunch and refreshments are also included.

Confirmed Speakers:

David R. Harper, Carmela Laganse, Janet Macpherson, Jess Riva-Cooper, Julie Hollenbach, KC Adams, Mary Anne Barkhouse, Nehal El-Hadi, Nicole Seisler, Nurielle Stern, Saffronia Downing, Sameer Farooq, Stacy Jo Scott, Stephanie Hanes, Susan Collett, and Suzanne Carte.

Symposium Sponsor

Raphael Yu Centre of Canadian Ceramics

About the International Ceramic Art Fair

The International Ceramic Art Fair (ICAF) is a 10-day celebration of some of the most compelling recent ceramic art, featuring works by emerging and established artists from a wide range of backgrounds, as well as online and in-person programming by artists and curators.

Many artists are reconsidering how we define ourselves as a species and how these changing definitions can alter our relationships to each other, to other animals and life forms, and to the land we inhabit. The separation of the human and non-human is increasingly understood as porous or insignificant. Clay can be seen as a mediator between the human and non-human, blurring the boundaries with its life-giving properties, its capacity to record and hold human memory, its characteristic of absorption, and its capacity to connect us to the land.

How can we re-orient our relationship to the planet through a more nuanced understanding of our connection to other forms of life? How can emerging discourses of the human shift us toward new and generative understandings of our bodies place in the world?

Join us to view the works at ICAF and participate in the accompanying programs to explore these and other questions.