On June 4th, in Montreal, CARFAC and RAAV (Regroupement des artists en arts visual) members gathered along with members of the creative community to participate in a productive conversation about artists’ rights and economic wellbeing. Our panel of remarkable artists came from all across the country and generously shared their work and experience with a crowd of over one hundred people.
Theresie Tungilik came from Nunavut and spoke in detail about the ways Inuit and Northern artists are working in traditional and contemporary mediums. She spoke to the myriad successes and challenges that are particular to artists in the north and gave us insight into how CARFAC can work to support artists’ rights to members of her community.
Moridja Kitenge Banza lives in Montreal and shared images of his remarkable practice with us. He showed us slides of his work which draws from cartography as well as “chiromancie” (palmistry). He spoke to the fact that he has needed to become a business person and that all artists are business people. He said that he has access to three art markets as a French speaking, African, Canadian resident and that he creates work specifically to be sold on those three markets.
Melissa Mongiat is a Montreal based artist, who works internationally and through a collective called Daily tous les Jour. Her work is site specific and uses digital technologies. She gave us the insiders history of her most sought after art piece, Musical Swings. She described the challenges and joys of creating innovative installation work that interacts with communities.
Collin Zipp joined us from Winnipeg and described his cheeky body of work through slides and storytelling. He also spoke to the nascent, yet burgeoning art world of Winnipeg, where there are few commercial galleries. He shared with us that in order to make a living as an artist he has had to do many kinds of things from teaching to installation as well as creating art pieces.
After the panel discussion, participants heard presentations regarding the Artists’ Resale Right (Droit de Suite), the updated news about Copyright Visual Art (formerly CARCC) and our work to harmonize the CARFAC fee schedule with the IMAA (Independent Media Arts Alliance) fee schedule. All of these presentations gave our members much needed insight into the ongoing work that CARFAC is doing on their behalf. More information about all of these dossiers is available to our members on our website or by calling our offices.
It was a wonderful gathering of intelligent and motivated artists! Our partner RAAV, did a marvelous job of hosting us while we engaged in the important discussion of what will drive CARFAC into the future. Thank you to all who came out!
For those of you who missed being in Montreal in person a video recording of the Draw More Income panel and presentations will be available soon on our website.