Thesis Chapters by Dr. Jill A Price
Hyper-sensitive to my settler history amidst a material culture that remains complicit in the eco... more Hyper-sensitive to my settler history amidst a material culture that remains complicit in the ecological destruction of Land as a multi-species being, From Unsettling to UN/making is an interdisciplinary research-creation PhD that works at the intersections of art, ecology, ethics, and aesthetics to recognize how today’s global industrial modes of production, consumption, dissemination, and discard are neo-colonial forms of ecological, and therefore cultural genocide. Particularly unsettled by how the visual arts perpetuate anthropocenic perspectives and gestures, this thesis begins by investigating how past approaches to unmaking throughout art history often aligned with acts of destruction or self-destruction. Proposing a new interdisciplinary approach to UN/making that aligns with acts of care and repair, research and creative outputs were primarily formulated through the writing of political theorist, eco-feminist, and vital materialist Jane Bennett, as well as the writing of Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck, Natalie Loveless, and Natasha Myers to arrive at an assemblage of actions or processes that help to prevent or redress harm.
Initially driven through the deconstruction and reconfiguration of existing artworks, decolonial theory, environmental research, and new materialist thinking led to questioning the conceptual foundations of Land-based art practices and Euro-colonial aesthetics carried forward through methods, mediums, modes, and iconography of Canadian traditions of fine art. Out of a desire to understand how creatives and cultural institutions might work together to bring creative practice more into relation with the timelines, liveliness, and needs of more-than-human ontographies, my final outcomes are the result of employing different methods of dealienation, decentring, degrowth, and decolonization to arrive at an UN/making Methodology. This adaptable framework for UN/making harm is designed to help usher in more eco-ethical approaches to creative production and building community outside of accelerated, elitist, racist, and sexist capitalist systems that keep the culture industry beholden to harmful ways of thinking and doing, as well as refocus attention to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action as they pertain to the treatment and use of Land, education, and the production, presentation, and dissemination of art.
Written in response to a call on 'museuming' for the Stedelijk Studies Journal, this essay works ... more Written in response to a call on 'museuming' for the Stedelijk Studies Journal, this essay works through the new materialist writing of Jane Bennett to outline how assemblage as an artistic method results in the co-generation of concepts, empathy for human and more-than-human entanglements, and upon reflection, risks the creation of undesirable or unwanted things. As such, this paper deconstructs a past exhibition entitled Unfurled: UN/making the Collection from a More-Than-Human Perspective to discuss how museum collections contain an abundance of objects and images that hold narratives and agency outside of human histories and how deconstructing their materiality and pictorial content can result in developing more knowledge, and in turn more empathy for non-human or more-than-human ontographies.
Also, identifying the dangers of assemblages when arrived at through individual modes of meaning-making, the paper ends by proposing how creatives and their cultural centres might move forward collectively to further decolonized ways of perceiving, producing, presenting, and programming.
Looking at the intersection of sculpture and drawing, Land as Archive is a practice-led and self-... more Looking at the intersection of sculpture and drawing, Land as Archive is a practice-led and self-reflexive body of research that considers the environmental realities of the Anthropocene by investigating the agency of “things” and their shadows. Focusing on the seen and unseen shadows of the global textile industry as well as documenting material excess consumed, reclaimed and produced during the research process, this inquiry aligns with Object Oriented Ontology to argue that shadows are actants and objects that conceal quantitative and qualitative data about our interconnected and traumatized landscapes.
After obsessively locating, recording, analyzing, assembling and archiving shadows in conjunction with environmental data, this collective body of work aims to answer three questions: How do shadows serve as material that can provide visual data about our material culture, how can one record the agency and affect of shadows through drawing and sculpture, and what might a real shadow look like?
Papers by Dr. Jill A Price
Twenty artists have contributed to this publication for an exhibition at Definitely Superior in T... more Twenty artists have contributed to this publication for an exhibition at Definitely Superior in Thunder Bay. Like a zine in style and content, the publication compiles a page or two by each artist, featuring poetry, drawings, collages, and combinations of images and texts that complement the title “Nasty Little Thoughts.”
Looking at the intersection of sculpture and drawing, Land as Archive is a practice-led and self-... more Looking at the intersection of sculpture and drawing, Land as Archive is a practice-led and self-reflexive body of research that considers the environmental realities of the Anthropocene by investigating the agency of “things” and their shadows. Focusing on the seen and unseen shadows of the global textile industry as well as documenting material excess consumed, reclaimed and produced during the research process, this inquiry aligns with Object Oriented Ontology to argue that shadows are actants and objects that conceal quantitative and qualitative data about our interconnected and traumatized landscapes. After obsessively locating, recording, analyzing, assembling and archiving shadows in conjunction with environmental data, this collective body of work aims to answer three questions: How do shadows serve as material that can provide visual data about our material culture, how can one record the agency and affect of shadows through drawing and sculpture, and what might a real shad...
Twenty artists have contributed to this publication for an exhibition at Definitely Superior in T... more Twenty artists have contributed to this publication for an exhibition at Definitely Superior in Thunder Bay. Like a zine in style and content, the publication compiles a page or two by each artist, featuring poetry, drawings, collages, and combinations of images and texts that complement the title “Nasty Little Thoughts.”
Generated for Dr. Keren Zaiontz's critical theory class in Cultural Studies at Queen's University... more Generated for Dr. Keren Zaiontz's critical theory class in Cultural Studies at Queen's University, Happy Objects Beget Happy Objects is an essay that takes up Sara Ahmed's multiple theories on what constitutes a 'happy object' from an ecological, social, and personal perspective while examining the cultural text of handmade blankets created by grandmother. Hoping to put into practice the accumulation of positive affect (Ahmed, 2010, p. 28), as this essay, too, has the potential to serve as a 'happy object.' I examine how objects might become, stay, and inspire future 'happy objects' through material webs of knowledge, skill, time, care, proximity and personal “decoding” or storytelling.
Panic at the Discourse, Feb 2020
Focusing on contemporary textile artists, Undoing as Activism provides examples of where “unmakin... more Focusing on contemporary textile artists, Undoing as Activism provides examples of where “unmaking” and “undoing” are creative acts that draw attention to the hidden potential in waste and lead to the undoing of other material and immaterial objects. I include case studies also bring into focus how caring, collecting, and researching become acts of undoing that bring attention to a never-ending chain of living and non-living materials that often go unconsidered in global networks of extraction, production, dissemination, consumption and disposal. The paper ends by posing questions to the reader about what else needs undoing and how one might go about getting it undone.
Curriculum Vitae by Dr. Jill A Price
Professional Curriculum Vitae, 2024
A selected list of professional experiences outlining the exhibition history, curatorial projects... more A selected list of professional experiences outlining the exhibition history, curatorial projects, teaching assignments, committee positions, and achievements of Dr. Jill Price
Curatorial Essays by Dr. Jill A Price
UNMADE is a curated exhibition of forty-two works from thirty-five artists that examines “unmakin... more UNMADE is a curated exhibition of forty-two works from thirty-five artists that examines “unmaking as a creative act” for an exhibition @ Propeller Art Gallery, June 26 — July 14, 2019.
As part of a self-reflexive journey that considers what it means to consume, make and curate in a moment of deep ecological crisis, UNMADE was conceptualized as an exhibition that ‘hails’[i] artists to move outside of colonial capitalist systems that encourage mass production and therefore the mass destruction of environments that sustain us.
Pushing the idea that ecology is “predicated on the principle that every creature is connected to every element that composes the environment, so that all living things depend on the balance of a complex system of growth and decay,”[ii] UNMADE invited artists to examine “unmaking as a creative act” and deliberate on how all art and design, by virtue of their material nature and processes, is Earth Art or Land Art as it is from the environment we acquire materials and it is to our landscapes work eventually returns.
Working on an UNMAKING Methodology as part of my PhD research, From Unsettling to Unmaking, concepts explored and manifested within this exhibition often echo concepts, beliefs and practices explored in art movements such as Dadaism, Fluxus, Relational Aesthetics and Craftivism in order to arrive at sustainable and reparative modes of making and presentation.
Artists included in the publication include Kadi Badiou, Amy Bagshaw, Claire Bartleman, Michael Becker-Segal, Ben Benedict, Christopher Bradd, Paul Cade, Sarah Carlson, Anita Cazzola, Emma Chorostecki, Steph Cloutier, Justin Cosman, Jacques Descoteaux, william boyd fraser, Megan Green, Brian Groberman, Gunnel Hag, Denise Holland, Sam Jones, Dagmar Kovar, Craig Mainprize, Sarah Moreau, Joseph Muscat, Pamela Nelson, Marcel O'Gorman, Theresa Passarello, Frances Patella, Caroline Popiel, Doris Purchase, Laurie Skantzos, Jessica Slipp, Janice Turner, Dori Vanderheyden, Andres Vosu, and Kim Wilkie
[i] (Louis Althusser, Mapping Ideology: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1994)
[ii] BOETZKES, AMANDA. The Ethics of Earth Art. NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Conference Presentations by Dr. Jill A Price
Hyper-sensitive about my Canadian settler history amidst a culture that remains complicit in the ... more Hyper-sensitive about my Canadian settler history amidst a culture that remains complicit in the ecological extraction and devastation of Indigenous land at home and abroad, I have come to recognize how the art world is part of the capitalist machine that contributes to the material excess that colonizes living and shared landscapes. Particularly critical of land-based art practices that deny the multi-species ecologies and histories of sites and art about the anthropocene that carries forward colonial, capitalist, patriarchal and resource perspectives and approaches to land, my comprehensive exam set out to answer, “Given a requirement for truth and reconciliation, what does it mean for settler-identified artists to contribute to redressing the altered and diminished ecology of sites that symbolize, honor and amplify colonial histories?
Specifically proposing to speculate on unmaking the colonial aesthetics and ecological sterility of lawns found at settler and militaristic historic sites such as Fort Henry, this paper explains how my comprehensive exam; exploring the science of trees and climate change in conjunction with the political realities of decolonization, reparation theory and non-representational theory, produced a number of conceptual paradoxes, practical difficulties and calls to action for self-identified white settler artists to unmake themselves from pursuing ecological research, remediation and presentation in public and academic spheres.
Asked to pay special attention to land-based artists’ responsibilities to involve Indigenous perspectives, this paper also revealed how researching, citing and building relationships with Indigenous persons for the purpose of economic or academic gain brings about many other ethical issues unresolvable through parameters and procedures outlined by Graduate Research Ethics Board and exasperated through graduate study timelines, graduate funding parameters, hierarchies of scholarship and academic silos of learning still firmly rooted within individualistic modes of knowledge acquisition and academic performance.
Universities Art Association of Canada, 2019
Title: Undoing as Activism: A Movement towards SLOW ART In response to Dr. Julian Haladyn's 1 cal... more Title: Undoing as Activism: A Movement towards SLOW ART In response to Dr. Julian Haladyn's 1 call for papers on Accelerated Art / Accelerated Culture, Undoing as Activism, in contradiction to Steven Shaviro's 2 writing, suggests global capitalist systems, including the world's over saturated art market 3 , has already been pushed "to its most extreme point." 4 Hailed 5 to find a counterpoint to the 24/7 6 reality of being a maker and a consumer, this paper highlights the work of Sharon Kallis, Katie Patterson and Peter von Tiesenhausen; three environmental artists who have chosen to develop sustainable, preventative and reparative methodologies. While presenting case studies that offer alternatives to the accelerationist aesthetics of biennale's, art fairs and Instagram, analysis offered outlines how caring, researching, collecting and classifying become acts of undoing that can inspire other artistic practices to conceptually and materially develop at an increased rate so as to redress the immediacy of human's ecological crisis. Titre du résumé: Défaire comme activisme: un mouvement vers le SLOW ART Pour répondre à l'appel du Dr. Julian Halaydan pour des soumissions sur l'Art accéléré / la culture accélérée, le démembrement de l'activisme, en contradiction avec l'écriture de Steven Shaviro, suggère que les systèmes capitalistes mondiaux, y compris le marché de l'art sursaturé du monde, ont déjà été poussés à leur maximum. Célébré pour trouver une harmonie à la réalité 24/7 d'être un artisan et un consommateur, cet article met en évidence le travail de Sharon Kallis, Katie Patterson et Peter von Tiesenhausen; trois artistes environnementaux qui ont choisi de développer des méthodologies durables, préventives et réparatrices. Tout en présentant des études de cas qui offrent des alternatives à l'esthétique accélératrice de la biennale, des foires d'art et d'Instagram, l'analyse proposée souligne comment les soins, la recherche, la collecte et la classification deviennent des actes de défaire qui peuvent inspirer d'autres pratiques artistiques à se développer conceptuellement et matériellement à un rythme accéléré afin pour redresser l'imminence de la crise écologique humaine.
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Thesis Chapters by Dr. Jill A Price
Initially driven through the deconstruction and reconfiguration of existing artworks, decolonial theory, environmental research, and new materialist thinking led to questioning the conceptual foundations of Land-based art practices and Euro-colonial aesthetics carried forward through methods, mediums, modes, and iconography of Canadian traditions of fine art. Out of a desire to understand how creatives and cultural institutions might work together to bring creative practice more into relation with the timelines, liveliness, and needs of more-than-human ontographies, my final outcomes are the result of employing different methods of dealienation, decentring, degrowth, and decolonization to arrive at an UN/making Methodology. This adaptable framework for UN/making harm is designed to help usher in more eco-ethical approaches to creative production and building community outside of accelerated, elitist, racist, and sexist capitalist systems that keep the culture industry beholden to harmful ways of thinking and doing, as well as refocus attention to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action as they pertain to the treatment and use of Land, education, and the production, presentation, and dissemination of art.
Also, identifying the dangers of assemblages when arrived at through individual modes of meaning-making, the paper ends by proposing how creatives and their cultural centres might move forward collectively to further decolonized ways of perceiving, producing, presenting, and programming.
After obsessively locating, recording, analyzing, assembling and archiving shadows in conjunction with environmental data, this collective body of work aims to answer three questions: How do shadows serve as material that can provide visual data about our material culture, how can one record the agency and affect of shadows through drawing and sculpture, and what might a real shadow look like?
Papers by Dr. Jill A Price
Curriculum Vitae by Dr. Jill A Price
Curatorial Essays by Dr. Jill A Price
As part of a self-reflexive journey that considers what it means to consume, make and curate in a moment of deep ecological crisis, UNMADE was conceptualized as an exhibition that ‘hails’[i] artists to move outside of colonial capitalist systems that encourage mass production and therefore the mass destruction of environments that sustain us.
Pushing the idea that ecology is “predicated on the principle that every creature is connected to every element that composes the environment, so that all living things depend on the balance of a complex system of growth and decay,”[ii] UNMADE invited artists to examine “unmaking as a creative act” and deliberate on how all art and design, by virtue of their material nature and processes, is Earth Art or Land Art as it is from the environment we acquire materials and it is to our landscapes work eventually returns.
Working on an UNMAKING Methodology as part of my PhD research, From Unsettling to Unmaking, concepts explored and manifested within this exhibition often echo concepts, beliefs and practices explored in art movements such as Dadaism, Fluxus, Relational Aesthetics and Craftivism in order to arrive at sustainable and reparative modes of making and presentation.
Artists included in the publication include Kadi Badiou, Amy Bagshaw, Claire Bartleman, Michael Becker-Segal, Ben Benedict, Christopher Bradd, Paul Cade, Sarah Carlson, Anita Cazzola, Emma Chorostecki, Steph Cloutier, Justin Cosman, Jacques Descoteaux, william boyd fraser, Megan Green, Brian Groberman, Gunnel Hag, Denise Holland, Sam Jones, Dagmar Kovar, Craig Mainprize, Sarah Moreau, Joseph Muscat, Pamela Nelson, Marcel O'Gorman, Theresa Passarello, Frances Patella, Caroline Popiel, Doris Purchase, Laurie Skantzos, Jessica Slipp, Janice Turner, Dori Vanderheyden, Andres Vosu, and Kim Wilkie
[i] (Louis Althusser, Mapping Ideology: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1994)
[ii] BOETZKES, AMANDA. The Ethics of Earth Art. NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Conference Presentations by Dr. Jill A Price
Specifically proposing to speculate on unmaking the colonial aesthetics and ecological sterility of lawns found at settler and militaristic historic sites such as Fort Henry, this paper explains how my comprehensive exam; exploring the science of trees and climate change in conjunction with the political realities of decolonization, reparation theory and non-representational theory, produced a number of conceptual paradoxes, practical difficulties and calls to action for self-identified white settler artists to unmake themselves from pursuing ecological research, remediation and presentation in public and academic spheres.
Asked to pay special attention to land-based artists’ responsibilities to involve Indigenous perspectives, this paper also revealed how researching, citing and building relationships with Indigenous persons for the purpose of economic or academic gain brings about many other ethical issues unresolvable through parameters and procedures outlined by Graduate Research Ethics Board and exasperated through graduate study timelines, graduate funding parameters, hierarchies of scholarship and academic silos of learning still firmly rooted within individualistic modes of knowledge acquisition and academic performance.
Initially driven through the deconstruction and reconfiguration of existing artworks, decolonial theory, environmental research, and new materialist thinking led to questioning the conceptual foundations of Land-based art practices and Euro-colonial aesthetics carried forward through methods, mediums, modes, and iconography of Canadian traditions of fine art. Out of a desire to understand how creatives and cultural institutions might work together to bring creative practice more into relation with the timelines, liveliness, and needs of more-than-human ontographies, my final outcomes are the result of employing different methods of dealienation, decentring, degrowth, and decolonization to arrive at an UN/making Methodology. This adaptable framework for UN/making harm is designed to help usher in more eco-ethical approaches to creative production and building community outside of accelerated, elitist, racist, and sexist capitalist systems that keep the culture industry beholden to harmful ways of thinking and doing, as well as refocus attention to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action as they pertain to the treatment and use of Land, education, and the production, presentation, and dissemination of art.
Also, identifying the dangers of assemblages when arrived at through individual modes of meaning-making, the paper ends by proposing how creatives and their cultural centres might move forward collectively to further decolonized ways of perceiving, producing, presenting, and programming.
After obsessively locating, recording, analyzing, assembling and archiving shadows in conjunction with environmental data, this collective body of work aims to answer three questions: How do shadows serve as material that can provide visual data about our material culture, how can one record the agency and affect of shadows through drawing and sculpture, and what might a real shadow look like?
As part of a self-reflexive journey that considers what it means to consume, make and curate in a moment of deep ecological crisis, UNMADE was conceptualized as an exhibition that ‘hails’[i] artists to move outside of colonial capitalist systems that encourage mass production and therefore the mass destruction of environments that sustain us.
Pushing the idea that ecology is “predicated on the principle that every creature is connected to every element that composes the environment, so that all living things depend on the balance of a complex system of growth and decay,”[ii] UNMADE invited artists to examine “unmaking as a creative act” and deliberate on how all art and design, by virtue of their material nature and processes, is Earth Art or Land Art as it is from the environment we acquire materials and it is to our landscapes work eventually returns.
Working on an UNMAKING Methodology as part of my PhD research, From Unsettling to Unmaking, concepts explored and manifested within this exhibition often echo concepts, beliefs and practices explored in art movements such as Dadaism, Fluxus, Relational Aesthetics and Craftivism in order to arrive at sustainable and reparative modes of making and presentation.
Artists included in the publication include Kadi Badiou, Amy Bagshaw, Claire Bartleman, Michael Becker-Segal, Ben Benedict, Christopher Bradd, Paul Cade, Sarah Carlson, Anita Cazzola, Emma Chorostecki, Steph Cloutier, Justin Cosman, Jacques Descoteaux, william boyd fraser, Megan Green, Brian Groberman, Gunnel Hag, Denise Holland, Sam Jones, Dagmar Kovar, Craig Mainprize, Sarah Moreau, Joseph Muscat, Pamela Nelson, Marcel O'Gorman, Theresa Passarello, Frances Patella, Caroline Popiel, Doris Purchase, Laurie Skantzos, Jessica Slipp, Janice Turner, Dori Vanderheyden, Andres Vosu, and Kim Wilkie
[i] (Louis Althusser, Mapping Ideology: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1994)
[ii] BOETZKES, AMANDA. The Ethics of Earth Art. NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Specifically proposing to speculate on unmaking the colonial aesthetics and ecological sterility of lawns found at settler and militaristic historic sites such as Fort Henry, this paper explains how my comprehensive exam; exploring the science of trees and climate change in conjunction with the political realities of decolonization, reparation theory and non-representational theory, produced a number of conceptual paradoxes, practical difficulties and calls to action for self-identified white settler artists to unmake themselves from pursuing ecological research, remediation and presentation in public and academic spheres.
Asked to pay special attention to land-based artists’ responsibilities to involve Indigenous perspectives, this paper also revealed how researching, citing and building relationships with Indigenous persons for the purpose of economic or academic gain brings about many other ethical issues unresolvable through parameters and procedures outlined by Graduate Research Ethics Board and exasperated through graduate study timelines, graduate funding parameters, hierarchies of scholarship and academic silos of learning still firmly rooted within individualistic modes of knowledge acquisition and academic performance.