"Offerings/Offrandes" :: Curated by France Trepanier


If you are looking for an incredibly inspirational, gifting, interactive art experience, be sure to visit the website Offerings/Offrandes, curated and created by Canadian artist France Trepanier.

“France Trepanier (Sidney, BC and Gatineau, QC) is a visual artist, a curator and a researcher. Her artistic and curatorial work has been presented in Canada and in Europe. France is of Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) and French ancestry. Her recent public art piece, An Imagined Cartography was presented in 2009 at the First Nations Garden at the Botanical Garden in Montreal. Her installation VESSELS was presented during the Open Sky Festival in Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories. This piece was created during the Aboriginal New Work Residency at the Banff Centre in Alberta. France recently co-curated the event Gepeg: Winds of Resistance, which showcased the work of young francophone Aboriginal artists from Quebec. The event was part of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective Camp Kabeshinan hosted by the National Gallery of Canada. France worked at the Canada Council for the Arts before becoming a Senior Policy Advisor for the Department of Canadian Heritage. She held a diplomatic post as First Secretary, Cultural Affairs at the Canadian Embassy in Paris. She was the Director of the Centre for New Media at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. France was also the Co-founder and Director of the artist-run center Axe Neo-7 in Gatineau, Quebec.”

France’s work brings the viewer into a deep, contemplative emotional space. I’m just glad to call her my friend, and to have been part of this wonderful interactive art project. The video above is my offering to the project. It is an elapsed record of me painting “child”, accompanied by a poem that I wrote based on Anishnabe Seven Grandfather Teachings. The music is a one-take improvisational track from the CD “Gulpa Ngawal” from the Indigenous Deep Listening Project entitled “Cry from the Heart”. I am one of the vocal contributors to the recording along with Marcia Howard, Laura Brearley, and Monica Weightman, and that high-pitched call at the end of the track is me. Keyboards by Steve Sedergreen. Michael Jordan on percussion, recorded at RMIT studios in Melbourne, AU in 2008. I am forever grateful to my friends in Australia for this project.

Watch the video below for the timelapse of me creating the painting. My son Jacob improvised the guitar soundtrack. Thanks, Jake!

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