ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on The Art That Reclaims Us S1:4
Aerial image of an Artic braided river.
In this resounding end to our Illuminating Worldviews series, Ayana speaks with artists Dr. Aubyn O’Grady and Jackie Olson about collective art and creative processes. Aubyn and Jackie share about their work on The Willow Basket Project at the Yukon School of Visual Arts and explore the ways that art can root us in place, support mining reclamation work, and even build bridges with unlikely allies.
Through this project, they invite dialogue between artists, miners, and community members, reimagining mined landscapes as spaces of regeneration and cultural reconnection. This episode serves as a homage to how creative work can support healing for the land and open new pathways of relationship and understanding.
“We’ve started a project where we’re thinking about occupying the gold fields—and other places that have been mined—with land art…in a way, restoring the sacredness back to these sites, restoring people back to them.”
Dr. Aubyn O’Grady
Dr. Aubyn O’Grady is the Program Director of the Yukon School of Visual Arts (Yukon SOVA) in Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Territory, Dawson City, Yukon. Aubyn’s research-creation practice is concerned with artist-led schools, the ethics of site-specific and land-based artworks, and artist engagements with rural places. Her art practice requires frequent and enthusiastic collaborations, and Aubyn can be credited with conceptualizing the Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers (2013-2017), the Swimming Lessons Aquatic Lecture series (2017-2018), Local Field School (2020-2022), and Drawlidays (2019+), a Dawson City-wide portrait exchange. Though her work is rarely meant to travel, documentation of Aubyn’s projects have been featured in exhibitions at the Younger Than Beyonce Gallery (ON, Canada), the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (ON, Canada), and the ODD Gallery (YT, Canada). Her work has also been the subject of a documentary; The League of Lady Wrestlers (2018), directed by Amy Siegel.
Jackie Olson
Jackie Olson was born and raised in Dawson City and is a citizen of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. Trained as a painter, Jackie received a BFA from the Alberta College of Art in 1992, and has been creating and learning new art forms since. Jackie’s work has been featured in exhibitions across Canada including the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff, AB), Harcourt House (Edmonton, AB), and a solo exhibition at the ODD Gallery (Dawson City, YT). Olson holds a faculty position at the Yukon School of Visual Arts, and in 2022 she was awarded the Yukon Hall of Innovator’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her transformative reimagining of age-old Yukon practices as an inspired new way of creating art.
♫ The music in this episode is “After the Rain” by Cole Pulice courtesy of Leaving Records, “So Long Favorite” by Chaz Prymek, and “Spinning Sphere” by Lior Holzman.
As we conclude this series, we sit in deep gratitude for the land that made this series possible and for all of the guests, community members, and team members with Illuminating Worldviews who brought it to life. This episode, and the series as whole, stand as a testament to the importance of this vital collective work.
Listen to the series…
Our Partners
This series was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at Illuminating Worldviews, held by the RIVER collective and Northern Council for Global Cooperation. We are so grateful to the organizers, speakers, and audience members who made this series possible.
Artists Aubyn O’Grady and Jackie Olson share about The Willow Basket Project. Together with Ayana, they explore the ways that art can root us in place, support mining reclamation work, and even build bridges with unlikely allies.