Contemplations on death, impermanence, grief, and ghosts can deepen an understanding of our intertwined livingness. The Waking Death Arts & Culture Event Series focused on these evocative themes, bringing together artists, guest speakers, and audiences to reflect on our shared mortality while engaging with the unique resources and spaces that arts & culture can provide. Events took place in Lethbridge (Alberta) at Casa, The Galt Museum, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, and the University of Lethbridge throughout September 9 to October 28, 2023, and were free and accessible to the public with generous support from the Canada Council of the Arts, City of Lethbridge, Allied Arts Council, Casa, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the University of Lethbridge.
The series was produced by a multidisciplinary trio of artists – Annie Martin, Shanell Papp, & Mia van Leeuwen came together with a shared interest in contemplating themes of death, impermanence, grief, and ghosts, expressed in their respective art practices.
Current legal and medical frameworks often sequester processes of death and dying to medicine and the funeral industry; end-of-life care, grieving and celebration are assigned to legally recognized family. Feminist, queer, gender-diverse, non-ableist, Indigenous and environmentally sustainable perspectives and approaches to death, dying and grief make urgent an expansive reconsideration of kinship, intimacy and care in human life and death, and with the more-than-human. Giving attention to practices of care in dying and death troubles ableist, ageist, gender-normative and racist prescriptions of our behaviour and relations within this critical space. The Waking Death: Arts & Culture Event Series offered a space for creative, relational, and slow considerations of these matters, contributing to alternative and critical conversations around death and dying, while focusing on the unique resources and spaces that the visual and performing arts can provide from an embodied and experiential perspective. — The Waking Death Collective, September 2023
Read preview article here: “Death makes for lively theme Casa exhibit opening”
For a full list of events and participating artists & speakers please visit www.wakingdeath.ca
Waking Death Exhibition Opening & Parade Procession
Waking Death Opening Ceremony with Elder Charlie Fox, September 9. 2023.
Crochet Skeleton completed by Shanell Papp in 2020
Parade Director & Facilitator: Mia van Leeuwen
Site Management: Em Carlson and Xavier Michaud
Skeleton Puppet Armature: Julia Wasilewski & Jaime Johnson
Ghost Costumes: Jaime Johnson & Julia Wasilewski
Ghost Choir: Kathy Zaborsky (Choir Director), Annie Martin, Katrina Violet, Lilianna Gaggero, Maddie McKee, Jess Syratt, Stilt Walkers: Nicola Elson & Jaret Pack, Mourner: Shanell Papp, Photography Angeline Simone, Shaela Miller and Mia van Leeuwen
Puppeteers: Gabrielle Houle, Oluseyi Dada, Anastasia Siceac, Brent Clark, Jordyn Nixon, Cole Fetting, Cole Pryor, Daniel Perryman, Achilles Friesen, Ahona Sanyal, Autumn Adrian, Sarah Barker, Chloe Jorgensen, Claire Smith, Caiden Cline, Lucus Dancey, Ash Thomson
Mia Star van Leeuwen 