My painting practice has an ambivalent relationship with the history of Canadian landscape painting. I am interested in how romantic notions of nature that correspond with popular modernist Canadian painters often fall apart in a contemporary context.

I use photographs of my suburban hometown of Port Coquitlam as the basis for many of my paintings. While these photographs have a connection to my own history, they also connect to a larger history of Canada and the legacy of colonialism in our country.

Catalina Hernandez Camacho, Zion Axell Fabro, Leen Jaafar, Jona Loomis, Ximena Ribeiro Tamiez, and Alessandro Ruvo present works which evoke a mindset in diverse and playful ways.

These graduates of Dawson’s respected Visual Arts program are distinguished by having began their studies in a global pandemic. Most started their Dawson coursework under partial, or ‘hybrid’ presence in smaller groups courses such as printmaking and sculpture; the rest were carried out in confinement at home, with online lectures and meetings

This was reflected in the work presented in this year’s graduation—a turning of the mind inward, to issues surrounding the self and occasionally family, which leads to the title of this presentation, mindset.

The Dawson Fine Arts department is proud to present this year’s graduating student exhibition, entitled Liminal. A culmination of their two years of intensive studies, this exhibition highlights the wide variety of artistic practices explored by the thirty graduating participants. The exhibition will extend from the gallery to Room 2G.4 and the 2G corridor.

Graduating students include: Issa Emmanuelle Albite, Anisia Alexe, Zoë Bleho-Levacher, Marianne Boisseau, Kayliah Della Foresta, Julia Demers, Rowan Michael Draper, Simone Duhamel, Zion Axelle Fabro, Ella Gauthier, Yuan He (Charlotte) Ge, Hichem Gervais, Emie Hamanaka-Delisle, Hannah Hamelin, Catalina Hernandez-Camacho, Leen Jaafar, Teodora Hristova Kachulkova, Jona Loomis, Emlyne Marchand, Anthony Mastrangelo , Roberto Alejandro Nunez Almendarez, Krisha Patel, Raina Proulx-Sanyal, Ming Qi, Anaïs-Aimée Rafaelsen, Ximena Ribeiro Tamez, Alessandro Ruvo, Angel Starnino, Nan Wang, and Le Shui Yu.

My work explores a connecting thread between Mi’gmaw and Eurocentric worldviews, using a visual language that is both symbolic and literal. It is enriched by the history of the bead to carry knowledge, communicate, evoke, and express Spirit. I embrace the bead as infinite potentiality, appearing divided, as part, and at once whole and all-encompassing. (Renee Condo)

Renee Condo (b.1979) is a contemporary visual artist of Mi’gmaw ancestry from the community of Gesgapegiag, Quebec.

Filiations features new work by Nadia Myre (Kitigan Zibi), and Nico Williams (Aamjiwnaang), both acclaimed artists who are linked by their former teacher-student relationship (Myre supervised Williams’ MFA work at Concordia University). This exhibition will draw out lines of affiliation and commitment in their practices providing an unparalleled opportunity to see two generations of artists staking out common ground – pedagogically, aesthetically, and politically.

Nadia Myre and Nico Williams in conversation

Untitled is a varied collection of images presented by the fall 2022 graduates of Dawson’s AEC Commercial Photography Program.

Seven students, including Fiona Campanelli, Valeria Cori-Manocchio, Surah Field-Green, Nicholas Gagnon, Molière Solon, Nadim Zakkour and Atena Zare, showcase their work in portraiture, fashion, product, sports photography and more. Their adventure at Dawson began in an unusual way–on a computer instead of in a classroom. Pursuing photography during a global pandemic wasn’t always easy, but they learned to hone their craft, and present their achievements with pride here.

Pareidolia is the ability to see or make pictures out of randomness. Seeing beyond what the average person sees and expressing that vision in an image is a large part of training to be a photographer. This collection of work by Dawson’s third-year photography students embodies how they see people, places or objects in their world.

Twenty two students are showing their work, including: Ayah Alatrash, Yisségnon-Chris Avosse, Sophie Becquet, Samuel Bermudez Fernandez, Lemuel Campbell, Mark Cedeno Moreno, Emma Cloghesy, Emma Diz-Giguère, Jilliane Flores, Jade Franco-Ehrmann, Alexe Grignard, Elizabeth Huppé, Sandra Kucko, Desireen Layne, Bramanda Mahaputra, Nour Naggar-Osama, Maya Naidu, Thibault Quach, Damon Roloff, Bianca Tedeschi, Mateo Vega Cantu, and Daphné Voisine.

Biennial 15 marks 30 years of Dawson Fine Arts Faculty members exhibiting their current art works at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery. It continues this long tradition of investigating the relationship between art making and learning, as well as reflects on the history of the biennial.

All faculty—past and present—of the Fine Arts department will have images and texts in the catalogue which accompanies the exhibition. There will also be a sound component containing faculty’s responses to the question of how the biennial has played a role in the pedagogical innovations of Dawson’s reputed Fine Arts Department.

The Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery is pleased to present the work of Ottawa-based artist Anna Williams. This is the first Montreal exhibition of Williams, who has created technically and conceptually complex prints and bronze sculptures which reinterpret female roles, gender conformity, and attitudes towards nature in classical Greek myths.

Born in Ottawa, Anna Williams studied sculpture and printmaking at Mount Allison University (Sackville, New Brunswick), before returning to Ottawa, where she continues to work, garden, and live with her wife, children, dogs and an excessive number of houseplants.

Departing from The Grove, the title of the 2022 exhibition of Visual Arts graduates from Dawson College, a meadow holds many life-forms presents a selection of strong and innovative work by nine upcoming artists from that cohort: Alicia Ferguson, Jade, Victoria Petrecca-Berthelet, Sabrina Schmidt, Boning Tao, Phan Chau Anh Thai, Kathy Mai Truong, and Kessem Vaknin.

Like any ecosystem, a healthy meadow displays diversity and sustains that divergence and difference over time.