June2019
YI XIN TONG (New York)
Yi Xin TONG is a nowhere-based artist and fisherman. Tong studied geology at China University of Geosciences in Beijing and received his BFA in Visual Art from Simon Fraser University and MFA in Studio Art from New York University. In poetic and absurd languages, he uses multimedia installation, site-specific project, video, and sound to analyze seemingly desperate social conditions, and our contradictory relationships with ourselves and with other living beings, objects, and cultural entities. Recent solo exhibitions include NARS Foundation, Vanguard Gallery, Katzman Contemporary; group exhibitions include the BRIC Biennial, Guangzhou Airport Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and MOCA Shanghai. Tong received Canada Council for the Arts Project Grants and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Scholarship.
The plan was to hike the mountains, fish the rivers, visit the museums, talk to the locals, shoot with the 4 different video cameras I have, work on a new tapestry, and make my first Super 8 film.
RISA HOROWITZ (Saskatchewan)
Born in Toronto, Risa Horowitz (1970) is based in Regina, Saskatchewan where she is an Associate Professor in the department of visual arts at the University of Regina. Her work includes photography, video, painting, drawing, performance, electronics, installation, and writing. Horowitz has received numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and several provincial funding bodies. Her works are in the collections of TD, BMO, ScotiaBank, the Canada Council Art Bank, and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. Works from her Trees of Canada series, and those she produced in the Arctic in 2017, are held in the national collection by Global Affairs Canada (on permanent display at Canada House, London, and the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., respectively).
Horowitz’s practice blurs boundaries between expert-amateur, hobby-work, and leisure-productivity. Much of her work has involved collecting and durational practices that pay attention to time and its presentation. She is also a vegetable gardener, tournament scrabble player, amateur astronomer, road-tripper, aspiring outdoorswoman, and she loves to laugh and take long walks.
Risa has brought three standard prime lenses for three camera formats and more big sheet film than she can possibly use to make art with in four short weeks as an Artist in Residence with the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture. While in Dawson City she plans to walk until it hurts, take daily joyrides on the ferry back and forth across the Yukon River, contribute in various ways to the history of moving stones in the Klondike, take several road trips with her gear, and quite possibly fulfill her goal of documenting the passing of the midnight sun while north of the Arctic Circle.
