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Saturday, 18 Jun 2022 at 2 pm

Curators’ Tour: Start Somewhere Else with Melanie O’Brian and Krista Belle Stewart

  • Melanie O’Brian

    Curator

    Melanie O’Brian is Associate Director/Curator at the Belkin, and has been the gallery’s Acting Director/Curator 2022 to the present. Prior to joining the Belkin, O’Brian was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Art Galleries, including Audain, Teck and SFU Gallery, from 2012 to 2020. She was formerly Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. O’Brian has taught at UBC, Emily Carr University and Simon Fraser University, and received her MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. She has organized exhibitions locally and internationally, edited numerous publications and written extensively for catalogues and magazines.

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  • Krista Belle Stewart

    Curator and Artist

    Krista Belle Stewart (Syilx Nation, b. 1979) is a visual artist and citizen of the Syilx Nation currently based in Berlin and Vienna. Stewart works primarily with video, photography, sculpture and performance, drawing out personal and political narratives inherent in archival materials while questioning their articulation in institutional histories. Her work has been shown at solo exhibitions at Goethe Institute Seattle (2021); MOCA, Toronto (2020); Nanaimo Art Gallery (2019); Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2019); Teck Gallery at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (2018) and Mercer Union as part of the 28th Images Festival, Toronto (2015). Group exhibitions include Kunstverein in Hamburg (2021); Eva International, Limerick (2021); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2020); CTM Festival, Berlin (2020); ISCP, Brooklyn (2017); Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal (2017) and Vancouver Art Gallery (2016). Screenings and performances include Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2022 and 2017); MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, Manhattan (2021); UnionDocs, Brooklyn (2019); 221A, Vancouver (2018) and Plug-In Institute, Winnipeg (2017). Stewart’s work is currently part of Galerie Barbara Thumm’s online platform New Viewings. She is an MFA graduate from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY and is presently a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria.

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Join curators Melanie O’Brian and Krista Belle Stewart for a tour of Start Somewhere Else: Works from the Collection, which centres around Stewart’s video installation Seraphine, Seraphine (2015) to consider doubling – and duplicities – in personal and historical narratives. O’Brian and Stewart will walk through the exhibition offering insights into the themes, conversations and points of resonance between Stewart’s and the other works in the exhibition drawn from the Belkin’s permanent collection.

The exhibition’s title, Start Somewhere Else, is a direct quote from Krista Belle Stewart’s mother, Seraphine Stewart, in her TRC testimony that is used in Seraphine, Seraphine. Seraphine begins her narrative by responding to the interviewer’s line of questioning, saying, “I can start somewhere else.” In determining how a story begins, how it is told, to whom, and where – and if – it concludes, both this work and other works in the exhibition complicate personal agency through structures of power.

Image (above): Marian Penner  Bancroft, Two Places at Once (detail), 1983. Purchased with support from the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2016

  • Melanie O’Brian

    Curator

    Melanie O’Brian is Associate Director/Curator at the Belkin, and has been the gallery’s Acting Director/Curator 2022 to the present. Prior to joining the Belkin, O’Brian was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Art Galleries, including Audain, Teck and SFU Gallery, from 2012 to 2020. She was formerly Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. O’Brian has taught at UBC, Emily Carr University and Simon Fraser University, and received her MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. She has organized exhibitions locally and internationally, edited numerous publications and written extensively for catalogues and magazines.

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  • Krista Belle Stewart

    Curator and Artist

    Krista Belle Stewart (Syilx Nation, b. 1979) is a visual artist and citizen of the Syilx Nation currently based in Berlin and Vienna. Stewart works primarily with video, photography, sculpture and performance, drawing out personal and political narratives inherent in archival materials while questioning their articulation in institutional histories. Her work has been shown at solo exhibitions at Goethe Institute Seattle (2021); MOCA, Toronto (2020); Nanaimo Art Gallery (2019); Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2019); Teck Gallery at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (2018) and Mercer Union as part of the 28th Images Festival, Toronto (2015). Group exhibitions include Kunstverein in Hamburg (2021); Eva International, Limerick (2021); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2020); CTM Festival, Berlin (2020); ISCP, Brooklyn (2017); Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal (2017) and Vancouver Art Gallery (2016). Screenings and performances include Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2022 and 2017); MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, Manhattan (2021); UnionDocs, Brooklyn (2019); 221A, Vancouver (2018) and Plug-In Institute, Winnipeg (2017). Stewart’s work is currently part of Galerie Barbara Thumm’s online platform New Viewings. She is an MFA graduate from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY and is presently a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria.

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