The Natural & The Manufactured is an annual thematic collaboration between the ODD Gallery and the KIAC Artist in Residence Program. Each summer, two artists come to Dawson City to undertake a six-week residency culminating in an ODD Gallery exhibition and public installation.
Since 2005, this unique project in the far Canadian north has worked to stimulate and engage artists and the community in a re-examination of cultural and economic values imposed on the environment. Participants present alternative political, social, economic and aesthetic agendas and strategies towards a re-interpretation of the regional landscape and social infrastructure.
As a site of creation, as well as presentation, the N&M promotes new research and projects with participating artists creating works specifically for the project during their residency at KIAC’s Macaulay House. As a result, this annual project addresses issues related to site-specificity, as well as land-based and environmental art practices: the meaning of geography and the geography of meaning, the ephemeral and the concrete, the transitory nature of “nature” and our philosophical need to resist and respond to it.
The Natural & The Manufactured explores these issues by assembling visual, media and interdisciplinary artists, curators, art historians, writers and cultural thinkers for residencies, exhibitions, lectures, essays and workshops. For more information, visit The Natural and The Manufactured