Manuel Axel Strain joins Vines Art Society as co-artistic director
Indigenous multidisciplinary artist will share responsibilities with founding artistic director Heather Lamoureux
Manuel Axel Strain.
VINES ART SOCIETY has just announced Manuel Axel Strain—a 2Spirit artist of Musqueam, Simpcw, and Syilx descent—as its new co-artistic director.
The news arrives in the lead-up to this year’s Vines Art Festival, which takes place from August 6 to 16. Strain will be working alongside founding artistic director Heather Lamoureux to foster an environment of shared responsibility.
Strain has been involved with Vines Art Festival in various capacities over the past five years, as both an artist and an event host. The Emily Carr University of Art + Design graduate draws primarily on the embodied knowledge of their ancestors in their practice, which spans multidisciplinary arts, community organizing, and harm-reduction work.
Earlier this year, Strain’s exhibition xʷəlməxʷ child was presented at The Polygon Gallery. Characterized by nostalgia and the reinvigoration of tradition, it included photographs of Musqueam landscapes and portraits of Strain’s family and friends, with Salish pictographs superimposed like masks over the children’s faces. In 2020, their large-scale diptych Self-portrait with mended flesh—which featured their arms wrapped in their grandmother’s scarf—was displayed at the SkyTrain’s Aberdeen Station in partnership with the Richmond Art Gallery, as part of the Capture Photography Festival.
Strain’s works have been featured at local institutions on several other occasions, including the Vancouver Art Gallery group exhibition Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo, and a solo exhibition called A Howl! at the Burrard Arts Foundation, following a residency there. Other collaborations have been with Unit 17, Surrey Art Gallery, and UBC Okanagan Gallery, as well as the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and the Saskatchewan-based nonprofit Neutral Ground.
In today’s announcement, Lamoureux said that appointing Strain as co-artistic director was “a natural and needed step” for Vines that aligns with the society’s “vision of creating and sharing art in relationship with the places and lands we work on.”
Vines Art Festival will kick off on August 6 at 6 pm with Receiving Direction, an opening ceremony at Second Beach emceed by Strain and Lamoureux. Admission is free and no tickets are required. 
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