Please join us in welcoming our newest senior artist-in-residence, Marjorie Beaucage! Marjorie is in residence at PAVED Arts for the month of April, and will be working on a new series of video poems and harm reduction videos.
About the Artist:
Marjorie Beaucage is a Two-Spirit Métis Auntie, filmmaker, art-ivist and educator, a land protector and a water walker. Born in Vassar, Manitoba, to a large Métis family, Marjorie’s life’s work has been about creating social change, working to give people the tools for creating possibilities and right relations. Whether in the classroom, community, campsite or the arts, Marjorie’s goal has been to pass on the stories, knowledge and skills that will make a difference for the future. For Marjorie, story is medicine.
As a Two-Spirit Métis Elder, Marjorie takes on the tough topics that need to be discussed. Her work is focused on giving voice to, and creating safe cultural spaces for, traditionally silenced or excluded groups. Marjorie is known on the local, regional and national levels as one who speaks truth to power, and who holds space for difference. She has been a Grandmother for Walking With Our Sisters; the Elder for OUT Saskatoon; and the Elder-In-Residence for the University of Saskatchewan Student Union. She has also been called on for national research initiatives that focus on Indigenous women living with HIV, Indigenous Harm Reduction, Indigenous youth who experience sexual and gender-based violence, and posttraumatic stress. In all of these, Marjorie returns to story as medicine, to art as medicine. Marjorie says of her work, “creation is a powerful thing; whether you’re making a baby or a loaf of bread or a movie, it comes from the same place. To get people to tap into that energy, that creates possibilities, so they don’t get stuck in this craziness that we’re in is transformative.”
And in Summer 2021 she completed a 1090 Km Water Walk to protect the Saskatchewan River, starting at the headwaters (Saskatchewan Crossing) near the Columbia Icefields in the Rocky Mountains to the Forks near Prince Albert, SK.
As a current Board Member of Chokecherry Studios, she is giving back to future art-ivists as they stand up for themselves and their community through creating art, music, and writing.
SCREENINGS, RESIDENCIES, ARTIST TALKS, AWARDS
My work has been screened in bingo halls and at City Hall, from Northern Labrador to New York. Some videos are passed around the community; some are in public libraries and collections at University Film Schools and Art Departments. They have a life of their own. Some work has been screened on specialty channels—WTN, APTN, Knowledge Network, Pride Vision and Global. It has been programmed in film festivals and gallery shows from Berlin to Edmonton, in a variety of contexts. Viewings on my Vimeo site reached over 2000 hits in 39 countries over the past year.
Selected awards, screenings, residencies, and artist talks include:
2021 CFMDC Superwomen series
2018 Saskatchewan Arts Board Artistic Excellence Award2018 Retrospective of my work at imaginative film festival . Toronto 2018 Uber Gurlz Exhibition and Performance, Regina Public Library. 2018 Listen Witness Transmit Keynote Speaker IMFA Conference Saskatoon.2017- 2018 Carrying It Forward, Dunlop Art Gallery. Rodham Art Gallery,Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (touring exhibition)1995 Re Viewing the Mosaic: Canadian Video Artists speaking through RACE, Mendel Art Gallery
1994 Self-Government Talk About It, Museum of Modern Art, NY
