The Artist in Residence program is part of the City’s continuing effort to encourage community involvement in the arts. The program invites a professional artist to work with City staff and the community to identify and develop creative artworks and projects in Victoria.
The Artist in Residence program is open to artists residing in British Columbia Selected artists participate in the City’s planning process over a two-year term.
Kemi Craig
Victoria-based dancer and visual artist Kemi Craig is the City’s third Artist in Residence. She will serve for the 2022–2024 term.
Craig is a graduate from the Emily Carr University of Art Design with a Masters degree in Fine Art. Since graduating, she has performed through local arts centres as well as across B.C. and Canada.
Craig’s film and video work has been exhibited at local galleries such as Legacy Art Gallery, Flux Gallery and the Ministry of Casual Living, as well as the Victoria International Film Festival and Antimatter Media Arts Festival. She has also worked with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Xchanges Gallery as an educator and curator.
Read the original announcement of Kemi Craig’s appointment.
For more information about Kemi’s programming during her residency, please visit her Instagram @kemi.craig.
Current Projects
Victoria’s Artist in Residence Kemi Craig is hosting a fascinating series of events this September as she begins to wrap up her two-year program with the City of Victoria. Kemi, who is a talented dancer and visual artist, is the third creative to hold the Artist in Residence position.
During her term she has created a diverse and engaging series of events and workshops ranging from dynamic extended reality and new media installations to embodiment dance projects and a workshop series connecting gardens to creating images in the darkroom.
Throughout her residency, Kemi has worked within subjects of celebration, cultural knowledge, erasure, theft and grief. She has beautifully used public art to call people in, share with them and hold space for important conversations and connection.
As we head into the last month of her residency, we invite you to join Kemi for some or all of her upcoming events.
Be sure to follow @kemi.craig on Instagram for updates.
The Body and the Beat
Join guest artist Monique Salez to explore your body and rhythm in a fun “play-shop” where we re-ignite our rhythmic body from the inside, out.
From our heartbeat to the ebb and flow of the water that surrounds us, we are all rhythmic, cyclical bodies. Just as we will acknowledge and be in rhythm with the outside elements of these lək̓ʷəŋən lands, we will explore our own body and all its percussive instruments from hips to hands, feet to shoulders and head to voice.
With music from across the globe, elements of eco-somatics, groove, flamenco and stomp, anyone can participate. You only need a body and a curious, open heart.
When: Thursday, September 5, 4-5 p.m.
What: Dance workshop
Where: Ship Point Harbour Stage
Cost: Free
The Language of Flamenco
Flamenco offers something unique. Did you know that the dancers, singers, guitarists and people clapping hands to hold rhythm are all communicating in real time through a language of flamenco?
This conversation relies on deep listening and is used throughout a performance. The shared language, which includes nonverbal cues, allows the dancers and musicians the freedom to improvise while keeping everyone together.
Participants must be determined to understand the speaker's perspective, to suspend judgement and be willing to receive new information from the speaker. In this way, flamenco itself is a metaphor for deep listening.
Join local dancers and musicians alongside award-winning choreographer and teacher Veronica Macquire for a demonstration of the unique ways that the dancers and musicians communicate with one another.
The first hour will include the demonstration and talk and the second hour will include improvised performances.
When: Sunday, September 8, 5-7 p.m.
What: Flamenco demonstration, followed by a performance
Where: Songhees Park Plaza
Cost: Free
Photodynamic Gardening Workshop with Trudi Lynn Smith: Part 2
Join guest artist Trudi Lynn Smith who coined the term “Photodynamic Gardening”. In part two of this workshop, Trudi will lead participants through composing images that use plant-based photo emulsions. The workshop will take place outdoors in the garden where Kemi and Trudi have been growing plants to make emulsions and developers for analogue film processing. No experience necessary.
When: Friday, September 13, 4-6 p.m.
What: A workshop about how to create images with plant-based photo emulsions
Where: 941 Kings Street, Wark Street Commons
Cost: Free
RSVP: Reserve your space here. This event is sold out.
Artist Talk
Join Kemi Craig for an artist talk as she concludes her residency with the City of Victoria. Learn about the projects she has brought to life as the City’s Artist in Residence and listen to her reflections on the past two years.
When: Tuesday, September 24, 6-7 p.m.
What: Artist talk
Where: Victoria City Hall, Antechamber
Cost: Free
Autocorrect Performance
Autocorrect is a dance performance composed of movements submitted by residents who responded to the invitation to share a gesture or common movement from their life showing how we strive for safety, perfection, adaptation, fitting in or making ourselves or others more comfortable.
The movements illustrate how we bring our internal worlds to our external experiences. Local dancers have been given these movements and will use them in a live performance which is free and open to the public.
When: Saturday, September 28, 2-3 p.m.
What: A dance performance based on gestures from the community
Where: The Atrium, 800 Yates Street
Cost: Free
Creative Community Lab
Kemi Craig is activating the Creative Lab at 742 Johnson Street as a space of experimentation with new media and analogue art. The Lab will serve as an incubator for local artists to test ideas and share knowledge with the greater community. Kemi will host workshops and events including film screenings, visual art installations, new media, literary and analogue art.
• Friday, August 30, 6-8 p.m.: A gathering for artists to share their current projects with the Global Pax Collective RSVP here.
• September 12, 5:30-6:30 p.m.: Financial Literacy 101 with Eileen Saini
Please follow @kemi.craig on Instagram for details about this series.
Darkest Light
Darkest Light 2124, an augmented reality installation comprised of hand drawn silhouettes of local people of the African diaspora and their oral narrations. This latest public art piece from Kemi Craig was created with support from Flux Media Gallery and Joshua Conrad of Slow Studies and developed with contributions from artists, academics and community organizers of the local African diaspora.
Where: Follow the map for self-guided tours. There are street decals at each location with a QR code that activates each of the augmented reality experiences.
Imagined as a time capsule, Darkest Light 2124 is an augmented reality installation comprised of hand drawn silhouettes of local people of the African diaspora and their oral narrations of either: a thank you to an ancestor, a story of joy or a message to a descendant. Their stories range from extraordinary occurrences, profound wisdom to be passed on and the small moments of delight found in the everyday. It was created with support from Flux Media Gallery and Joshua Conrad of Slow Studies and developed with contributions from artists, academics and community organizers of the local African diaspora, including Charles Amartey, Tania Betiku, Zoe-Blue Coates, Jamila Douhaibi, Silivia Mangue, Devi Mucina, Taylor Pannell, William Ngenda, Angie Riley, Yimmie Sonuga and Megan Stuart.
While speaking through the images and voices of local Black communities, its locations throughout the downtown core trace a route which connects historical, present and future Black presence. Beginning with the upper causeway of the Inner Harbour where the steamship Commodore brought Victoria’s first Black settlers, to the bricks along government street which acknowledge their experiences through naming and referencing the research of BC Black History Awareness Society in documenting their stories. Finally, the experience rests at what is now the Hudson Building (Victoria Public Market). In the past, this was a settlement filled with tents where people, including Black settlers lived until going on to build homes, schools, churches and businesses in the Greater Victoria area and moving into W̱SÁNEĆ territories also referred to as Saanich. Though making the work accessible from many locations and for many bodies was important to partners in this project, it was also important to create a route which marks ongoing Black presence in space and time.
Learn more: Check Kemi Craig’s Instagram account for additional details.
Photo Gallery
Past Projects
Below are some of Kemi Craig's past projects as the City's Artist in Residence.