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The Sounding

4 people stand facing one another in a landscape, washed in golden light.

The Sounding / Jess Richter, Rania Alharthi, Kris Alvarez, Terri Fidelak
November 8 – December 13
Opening Reception Friday, November 8, 7–10 pm
Doors 7 pm, ritual 7:30 pm, reception 8 pm
PAVED Arts Production Centre, 424 20th St. W. Saskatoon

Concurrent with “We Return” PAVED & AKA Artist-Run billboard opening reception, BlackFlash Magazine launch, and PAVED Meant Vol. 5 launch. 

Through The Sounding, Rania Alharthi, Kris Alvarez, Terri Fidelak, and Jess Richter collaboratively create and perform mourning rituals. Considering the silencing of grief in capitalist North American society — despite the often overwhelming anger and sadness of our world — this project seeks to give space for complex emotion to be witnessed and held.

Relying upon the genuine relationships between collaborators, the artists create improvised sound performances in response to indoor and outdoor locations and to the sorrows they find within themselves and one another. In performing their recognition of spiritual and emotional pain as transmitted through the body, they tune the space for whatever comes next.

At PAVED, these rituals will be offered as pathways for viewers to engage in personal and communal mourning.

This exhibition is the fourth in a series of presentations by PAVED Arts involving artist collectives that have emerged in our Province through the time of pandemic.

Rania Alharthi

Rania Alharthi is a multifaceted artist whose creative endeavours span the realms of theatre, film, installation, and dance. Her innovative studio productions feature a unique blend of collapsed objects, soundscapes, film projections, and live performance, inviting audiences to engage with her work on multiple sensory levels.  Rania’s interdisciplinary practice is profoundly influenced by her experiences as a member of the Diaspora and her engagement with postcolonial identities. She is driven by a desire to challenge conventional narratives and to forge new pathways for dialogue and reflection through her art.

Kris Alvarez

Kris Alvarez is a Treaty 4 Filipina theatre artist who loves making art while making relationships. Kris enjoys a good metaphor, a good laugh, and a good cry.

Like an 80’s mom in a flowered kerchief taming unbrushed hair, heading to a beach in a two-toned station wagon, blaring her favourite mixtape, Kris invites friends along the way to join her. “Jump in the back! Not sure when we’ll get there. There’s no seatbelts but there’s really good snacks.”

Besides making art and gathering people, as a daughter-sister-Tita-mom-wife, Kris makes space for being herself with her family, daydreaming and rest.

Terri Fidelak

Terri Fidelak is an interdisciplinary artist based on Treaty 4 Territory in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. She is intrigued by what is often easily overlooked and questions how attention and value are interconnected. Through sculpture, drawing, and performance, she works to uncover ways that objects, people, and environments converge to resonate with unexpected meaning.

Outside the studio, Terri enjoys spending time with her family and being in nature.

Jess Richter

Jess Richter is an artist based in Oskana, Treaty 4 Territory, Saskatchewan, Canada. She earned an MFA in Print Media from the University of Regina in 2017, and was the Director of the Art Gallery of Regina from 2019 – 2022. She maintains a diverse practice with an emphasis on intuitive printmaking practices, painting, performance, site-specific installation, contemporary folk practices, papercutting, film, and sculpture with unconventional materials. Her syncretic practice explores German-Canadian post-war identity, religion, witchcraft, the occult, folk ritual, and diaspora.

She is a witch|hexe of geographically muddled heritage, and is a part of the post-war east German diaspora.