Throughout the years, women video artists have shed a light on important questions and themes: revolution, domesticity, gender, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQI+, immigration, racism, and many more.

GIV connects women artists of all generations, origins, and horizons to varied publics. The cultural and generational diversity, at the heart of our mandate for decades, contributes to the expansion of our local and international influence. GIV draws its strength from the communities we collaborate with. Our practice of inclusion is reflected in the works of our collection.

The video medium and the formats have been changing, as the context in which the artists have been evolving, and the works have been diversifying. And yet, some themes seem timeless. We find them reinvented by new generations, other cultures or by the same artists that renew themselves. Since its beginnings, GIV addresses subjects like feminism, immigration, sexuality, relationship to the self, violence, discriminations and oppressions, aging, technological transformations, etc. In this moving continuity, our collection is enriched, supporting works of the next generations.

With this Case Study, we would like to think about the ways in which video artists approach these subjects and themes, throughout the years. These works bear witness to changes and evolutions. The main question that this Case Study is exploring is: what is expressed by women through the video works that GIV distributes, from 1975 to now?

To examine this research question, we plan to prepare short video programs, curated by different artists that have been collaborating with GIV for some time and emerging artists as well. These cross perspectives would enable transversal themes to emerge from our collection and, probably, new ones to appear. The initiative could also be accompanied by the digitization of some works. Also, we foresee touring some of these programs to artist centers in other Canadian provinces, an evocation of GIV's historical tours of the 1980s.