A Conversation
on the Legacy of
Iljuwas Bill Reid
Celebrating 100 Years
Please join Onsite Gallery and Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge for a virtual celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Haida artist Iljuwas Bill Reid.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
3:00PM (EST) | 12:00PM (PST)
This is a virtual event. It will be hosted on Zoom.
Wapatah: Centre and the Onsite Gallery would like to acknowledge the funding support of OCAD University, SSHRC, and the Canada Council for the Arts that made this event possible.
Dr. Gerald McMaster was joined in conversation by Jisgang Nika Collison and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, with Bill Holm joining through a pre-recorded interview, as they examined how Iljuwas Bill Reid gained a sense of identity and purpose through his artistic practice. Sarita Srivastava, Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD U, and Sara Angel, ACI Founder and Executive Director, joined the event for a special dedication and announcement of the Iljuwas Bill Reid publication.
ABOUT ILJUWAS BILL REID
Few twentieth-century artists were catalysts for the reclamation of a culture—Iljuwas Bill Reid (1920–1998) was among them. Born into a mixed-race family in Victoria, B.C., and denied his mother’s Haida heritage in his youth, Reid would go on to become one of the most significant Northwest Coast artists of our time. During his fifty-year-long career he was prolific and articulate—creating nearly a thousand original works and writing dozens of texts that gave voice to his vision and the cultural issues of his day. He is remembered as a passionate artist and an adamant community activist, mentor, and writer. This event will explore the legacy of Reid’s work and how it has shaped the perception and development of Northwest Coast art, and his long-lasting impact within the Haida community.
“Wapatah Centre and the Onsite Gallery would like to acknowledge the funding support of OCAD University, SSHRC, and the Canada Council for the Arts that made this event possible.”