D’Arcy Wilson
The Memorialist: Keynote Address
Beaconsfield Carriage House
Friday, September 22, 2017 - 9:30am - 11am
D’Arcy Wilson, The Memorialist. Photo: Courtesy of Chris Friel, presented by kind permission of the Natural History Museum, London.
D’Arcy Wilson, The Memorialist: Keynote Address, 2017. Photo: Will Baker.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The first public zoological gardens in North America opened in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1847. Their proprietor, Andrew Downs, tended to the animals himself, and he referred to the grounds as his Humble Memorial. Downs’ Zoological Gardens marked, perhaps, the first instance that the wild animal was placed in a “living museum” within a wilderness setting; hence, in spite of their proprietor’s sincere intentions, these gardens signaled a broken bridge between the colonial settler and the natural world. The public lecture and performance The Memorialist: Keynote Address illustrates this narrative while lamenting an impossible disconnect from nature, inherent in Western culture’s attempts to grasp it.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
D'Arcy Wilson (MFA University of Calgary ’08, BFA Mount Allison University ’05) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work probes ecological angst and anxiety through the lens of Settler culture, often considering Western Culture’s fraught relationship with wildlife. D’Arcy has collaborated with wildlife rehabilitation centers, natural history museums, school choirs, and more. She has participated in numerous artist residencies and exhibitions across Canada. In 2016 she initiated and curated Saltbox Contemporary Arts Festival; a festival of performance art in Corner Brook, NL. D’Arcy is based in Corner Brook, where she is Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Program at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Campus.