Submitted by Oxygen Art Centre
Nelson’s Oxygen Art Centre is now presenting the virtual juried youth exhibition entitled If I Can’t Dance To It, It’s Not My Revolution. It features artwork, artist talks, and more by Josh Franklin, Meadow Kroeger, Spencer Legebokoff, Katherine Victoria MacKay, and Bethany Pardoe.
Selected by jurors Marilyn Lee and Ian Johnston, the group exhibition brings together talented young artists working in a variety of mediums — from virtual reality to painting to ceramics to mixed media. The virtual exhibition format has been developed as a response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, while also creating space to celebrate young artists and highlighting the need for cultural engagement during social distancing.
If I Can’t Dance To It, It’s Not My Revolution also includes new, commissioned literary works by emerging poets and authors Nelson Aiken, Spencer Legebokoff, Suki Simington, and Hailey Viers.
The website was made by Cristian Hernandez, co-founder (with Juli Majer) of DDOOGG, an alt-comics press whose publications emphasize experimentation and abstraction. Hernandez will begin his MA in science and technology studies at UBC this fall.
The group exhibition’s title is in part derived from a similar phrase by feminist anarchist and writer Emma Goldman (1869-1940), and further appropriated by Toronto-based band Doomsquad on their album, Let Yourself Be Seen.
If I Can’t Dance To It, It’s Not My Revolution invokes the hope and horror of the contemporary moment. For significant social change to be effective it needs to engage the creative cortex, one that includes both the mind and the heart.
The exhibition also features a reading list and resources in support of the anti-racist movements taking place across North America.
Visit the exibit at virtualexhibition.oxygenartcentre.org until Aug. 15.
