10/07/2026
Visiting Artist Lecture Series 2026–2027: Artist Talk with Chris Mendoza
In this year’s VALS, we will be exploring topics and questions with 8 different visiting artists throughout the year on:
- How histories are carried across generations
- How communities are sustained through relationships to place
- How more just and resilient futures can emerge from renewed ways of relating to the land
Date: Wednesday, October 21
Time: 1:00 - 2:00pm
Location: AA 304
Sign up: https://lnkd.in/gkG2d3e3
Our upcoming artist will be...
Chris Mendoza (chris mendoza) is an artist and cultural worker based in Toronto. His current work is centered around waterways and urban ecologies, combining exhibitions, performances, writing, and public programming as modes of affective research and place-based learning.
Image Credit:
From the Eye to the Ear, Implicit Choreographies & Relational Topographies with Pumice Raft, 2022. Photo courtesy of Ben Freedman.
This year’s theme:
Stories Held by the Land
Our relationships to land are shaped by history, memory, and the places we come from. They are formed through stories of migration and belonging, and through the ways our ancestors lived with, cared for, and drew sustenance from the land.
As questions of land use, displacement, and ecological degradation become increasingly urgent, how do artists engage with the land as a site of remembrance, reciprocity, and resistance? How can artistic practice challenge dominant narratives of ownership and extraction while imagining more reciprocal ways of living grounded in kinship, care, and connection?
An annual series organized in collaboration with Doris McCarthy Gallery.
