Candace Couse
With a theme of “the body,” I appealed to artists across the Lower Mainland, the traditional territory of the Stó:lō people (S'ólh Téméxw), for submissions to the seventh iteration of the Fraser Valley Biennial. The resulting exhibition comprises of outstanding artwork selected from a pool of Fraser Valley artists. The works represent the diverse and deeply meaningful ways we think about and through the body, exploring illness, gender, sexuality and disability narratives, the body as an organism, the body’s relationship to technology, the labouring body, the body as a site for pain and pleasure, and more.
Since its launch in 2011, the Biennial has facilitated and contextualized local visual art practice while broadening the public’s awareness and appreciation of regional talent. The full exhibition will premiere at The Reach from January to May 2023, touring further locations throughout the remainder of the 2023 calendar year. Learn more at www.candacecouse.net
Dr. Candace Couse is an Interdisciplinary Humanities scholar and artist. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative arts at the University of the Fraser Valley, located on Stó:lō land, where she has the honour of living and creating. Through her creative practice, she has shown across Canada, the USA, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Trinidad, Pakistan, Nepal, India and Iceland. She has a history of work with committees, BODs, and advisory councils. Couse’s research examines how autobiographically produced images of illness can become a site for challenging the universal ideal body present not just in social understandings of “health,” but in critical thinking itself, asking: in what way is the methodology of the art experience a useful tool for medicine?
March 2023
Click Here to watch the 3-minute video.