Thinking Allowed: Social Justice, Migration, And The Environment

A working dialogue on the models, forms and focus of the Thinking Allowed publication/s, which are designed to document and reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the research work of the project. Convened by Gary Sangster, Director, Drawing Projects UK and Honorary Research Fellow, University of Dundee, with participants Roshini Kempadoo, Rita Wong, Sabina Gamez Ibarra and Hei Lam Ng (from Concordia Elastic Spaces). 

Panelist:

• Moderator: Gary Sangster 
• Roshini Kempadoo
• Rita Wong 
• Sabina Gamez Ibarra [Concordia MFA]
• Hei Lam Ng [Concordia MFA]

Bios

Gary Sangster, Director of Drawing Projects UK, and Honorary Research Fellow with DJCAD / University of Dundee focuses his work as a curator, art educator, writer and museum director on public engagement. He is giving direction to the publication as a vehicle for interdisciplinary research.

Roshini Kempadoo (Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media [CREAM] PhD programme Director, University of Westminster) and a photographer and media artist who interprets, analyzes and re-imagines historical experiences and memories as women’s visual narratives within the focus of migration, and active in the ‘Black Arts’ movement in the UK in the 1980s and instrumental to the founding of Autograph Association of Black Photographers, London.

Sabina Gámez Ibarra is a Colombian audiovisual artist. Currently, she is pursuing her MFA in Intermedia and is a Research Assistant at the Elastic Spaces Lab at Concordia University. Her research and art practice is centred on understanding the physical, phenomenological experience of embodiment and how the body is understood and contextualized in the media and the environment. Gámez, experiments with different formats and approaches to audiovisual media, including chroma key, projection, video performance, and VR to explore notions of the self, self-recognition, remnants, and embodiment in the media. Her current project is a multidisciplinary collaboration with the print-media artist Sabina Rak, where they seek to create community through the connection between feminist practices, ecological considerations, and historical events. Gámez’s works have been exhibited in Colombia, Mexico, and South korea. 

Originally from Hong Kong, Hei Lam Ng is a Canadian-based artist currently residing in Montreal, Quebec. Her works cross disciplines in print media, photography, book objects, and text art. She often draws inspiration from language, displacement, abstract spaces and translates concepts into tactile objects that introduce active perception to the viewers. Hei Lam’s works have been exhibited in cities across Canada in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, as well as Tokyo, Japan. Hei Lam is a recipient of the 2023 Research and Creation Grant component from the Canada Council of the Arts.

Rita Wong (Emily Carr University of Art + Design) investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, water justice, ecology, and decolonization. She has co-edited an anthology with Dorothy Christian entitled Downstream: Reimagining Water. A recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop Emerging Writer Award, Wong is the author of beholden (with Fred Wah), undercurrent, perpetual (with Cindy Mochizuki), sybil unrest (with Larissa Lai), forage (winner of Canada Reads Poetry 2011), and monkeypuzzle. Wong works to support communities’ efforts towards justice and health for water, having witnessed such work at the Peace River, the Wedzin Kwa, Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek, the Columbia River, the Fraser River, the Salish Sea, and the Arctic Ocean watershed. She understands that when these waterways are healthy, life (including people) will be healthy too, and that we cannot afford to endanger and pollute the waters that sustain our lives.