Aug 5 – 27
Artist Talk: Sunday, August 27, 6 pm
Joshua Schwebel’s artistic practice is anchored in Institutional Critique. His work looks at the material realities and infrastructures of art. He is interested in the unseen financial pressures that shape art in Canada, with the goal of increasing the transparency and openness of the art sector.
His research in Dawson will examine intersections of mineral and cultural wealth.
To a great extent, Canadian wealth comes from over a century of government-backed resource extraction. This perpetuates a Western Imperialist approach to ‘land’ as an inert expanse to be “discovered” and gutted, ignoring the pre-existing integrity of what exceeds the extractive grasp of financialization. Schwebel’s residency in Dawson will seek to access a first-hand encounter with gold mining: to rematerialize the geological wealth that, via taxation and public arts funding, supports (his) art.
Joshua Schwebel is a Canadian artist based between Montreal and Berlin. His work has been exhibited internationally and across Canada. His work on resource extraction and its counterbalance through arts philanthropy will be exhibited this coming spring at Struts Gallery in Sackville.