Joyce Wieland Study Days
Jarislowsky Institute
9-10 March 2023
A collaboration between the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art
The Study Days brought together a selected group of Canadian scholars in Montreal to discuss critical aspects of Joyce Wieland’s oeuvre in anticipation of the Joyce Wieland: Heart-On exhibition (MMFA, AGO 2025). The participants had the opportunity to examine examples of Wieland’s art at the MMFA and in a private Montreal collection, thereby enriching the three panel discussions which focused on distinct, yet interrelated topics at the core of Wieland’s polyvalent practice.
PANEL ONE: Craftivism Avant la Lettre?
Moderated by Martha Langford, with Kirsty Robertson and Adriana Alarcón
This panel focused on Wieland’s expressly feminist use of craft beginning in the late 1960s. Martha Langford, Kirsty Robertson, and Adriana Alarcón discussed Wieland’s fibre arts practice and her ongoing impact on feminist craft practices and craftivism.
PANEL TWO: Ecological Urgencies Then and Now
Moderated by Johanne Sloan with Mark Igloliorte and Kathleen Vaughan
The second panel centred on Wieland’s interest in environmental protection, including her participation in protests against the building of a hydroelectric dam in James Bay in solidarity with Cree inhabitants of the area. Johanne Sloan, Mark Igloliorte, and Kathleen Vaughan explored how Wieland wrestled with questions of Canadian identity and Indigenous sovereignty through the lens of environmental protection and how these questions anticipated pressing political issues in Canada today.
PANEL THREE: Trudeau et Vallières: Des allégeances compatibles?
Moderated by Anne Grace with Vincent Bonin and Jean-Philippe Warren
Viewing of excerpts from Reason over Passion (1969) & Pierre Vallières (1972)
The final panel focused on questions of national identity and nationalism that permeated Wieland’s practice, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Anne Grace, Vincent Bonin, and Jean-Philippe Warren discussed two of Wieland’s experimental films, one centred on the words of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the other on the writings of Pierre Vallières, both from a formal and a political perspective. An excerpt of each film was shown and discussed thus bringing to the fore Wieland’s complex engagement with contemporary political discourse.
