Richmond BC, Canada #richmondartgallerybc
Artists Wan-Yi Lin and Roger Chen are joined by Professors Heesoon Bai and Denise Findlay to reflect on ideas around nourishment by way of relationships – with oneself, others, and with the land. The artists’ installation, Six Acres, provides the starting point for exploring how a state of interconnectedness and sound mental health may be achieved, and its greater community impact.
This session was a live-streamed event. Watch the video HERE.
About the Presenters:
Heesoon Bai, Ph.D., R.C.C, is Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (SFU). She is an educational philosopher and a psychotherapist with a deepening interest in holistic-contemplative education and Ethics of Healing. Through contemplative inquiry and practices, as well as moral and spiritual education, Dr. Bai offers ways of healing, replenishing, and animating human beings. Her current research interests cluster around examining and deconstructing ontological and epistemological assumptions that underlie our culture’s hurtful and harmful ways with the earth and its inhabitants. Her work is focused on encouraging a collective transition to a post-egoic culture. She has co-edited three volumes on contemplative education (State University of New York Press), one volume on ecological virtues (University of Regina Press), and has published over 80 journal articles and book chapters. Many of her academic publications can be downloaded from her SFU web depository here: http://summit.sfu.ca/collection/204
Denise Findlay is a bi-cultural person of Indigenous Coast Salish and settler ancestry, proudly belonging to the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), who has dedicated the last 20 years to travelling throughout British Columbia and across Canada working exclusively in Indigenous communities facilitating processes focused on collective healing. Denise’s work is strongly focused on de-centring experts where child and youth mental health his concerned and restoring dignity to the role the natural kinship circle plays in providing care to Indigenous children and youth. Denise is responsible for leading the development and implementation of an innovative Provincial program called Gathering Our Medicine, in collaboration with community-based Advisory and Working Groups. Gathering Our Medicine provides an innovative, cross cultural framework that empowers communities to see themselves and their placed based ways of knowing and being as the best medicine for children and youth. The program respectfully and wisely de-centres mental health experts, re-orienting them as facilitators who walk alongside families and communities restoring dignity and confidence to the role of raising and caring for children.
Denise is currently undertaking a PhD. in Philosophy of Educational Practice and Theory at Simon Fraser University and was awarded a Social Sciences Humanities Resource Council Scholarship (Canadian Graduate Scholarship) for her ground-breaking research.
Mizzonk is the collective name of the artist duo Wan-Yi Lin and Roger Chen, Taiwanese Canadians. The duo’s art, often introspective, is born out of living in a seclusive and natural environment for many years. Their artworks are outcomes and documentation of the paths to deepen their connections with the inner self, which they view as interconnected. Mizzonk studio has received several awards, including the Accent on Design Award, a design industry award held in New York City, and the TID Award of Space Installation Art held in Taipei, Taiwan. Recent projects by Mizzonk include a one-year-long participatory art project in Maple Ridge, BC; a solo installation at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, WA; an ongoing billboard art project and a participatory public art project in Pingtung, Taiwan.
They are graduates of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Lin holds an MFA in visual arts, and Chen received a Bachelor of Architecture. They live and work in Greater Vancouver in British Columbia.
This program is supported by the #RichmondHasHeart program.
