Wikipedian in residence
Fall 2019
We are proud to welcome Camille Larivée as the first Wikipedian in residence at Artexte for the month of October. She will also participate in the roundtable discussion that will take place on November 9, 2019, during the third edition of Wikipedia Art + Feminism edit-a-thon organized with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Larivée’s research focuses on the invisibility in Wikipedia of artists from Indigenous, people of colour and LGBTQ2S+ communities whose practices develop around street art (murals, wheat pastes, stencils, graffiti, etc.) and practices in urban public spaces (performances, installations and direct actions). These mediums call for immediate action and are executed mostly in a spirit of collective solidarity where the voices, bodies and stories of these individuals are put forward and honoured. These artists and collectives, who share alternative stories of resilience and who fall outside artistic institutions, are often absent from art history and Wikipedia.
This research residency will ensure the inscription of these artists and types of practices in Wikipedia, thus increasing and expanding accessibility, recognition and notoriety of urban intervention practises on “sites of continuous negotiation, considerable resistance and social transgression.”1 This research thus highlights visual and corporal artistic expressions focused on empowerment and collective memory in urban public spaces.
Equally, the addition of these names and works to Wikipedia is essential for greater inclusiveness and plurality of voices within of the Wikipedia encyclopedia and Wikipedia Art + Feminism contribution events.
Camille Larivée is a street artist, independent curator, writer and cultural worker based in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang, unceded Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe territories (Montreal, QC). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She co-founded the collective Unceded Voices / Les Voix Insoumises in 2014, a convergence that works on the invisibility of Indigenous and women of color, 2Spirit and Queer women artists and muralists in Montreal’s urban space. Having recently completed the coordination of the Tiohtià:ke Project, an ambitious two-year cycle of exhibition and curatorial programming bringing together Indigenous artists and curators from Quebec and elsewhere for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective / Collectif des Commissaires Autochtones (ACC–CCA), Camille continues to work for ACC-CCA where she is now the Director of Programming.
[1] Kathleen Lorde (2005). << Permeable Boundaries: Negotiation, Resistance, and Transgression of Street Space in Saint-Henri, Quebec, 1875-1905 >>, Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, vol. 33 (2), 17-29.