We are pleased to announce that, in collaboration with our partner organization, VIVO Media Arts, we are hosting Roxanne Charles and her son, Easton Arnouse, as two new A/CA Artists in Residence. Throughout the following months, Roxanne and Easton will be working with VIVO to produce a new counter-archival project. Stay tuned over the following months for more details!
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Roxanne Charles of Semiahmoo First Nation is a cultural historian employing means of visual representation, oral history, and ceremony. Methods which have been utilized by Semiahma People for thousands of years. Her work explores and documents a variety of issues that reflect her daily life such as spirituality, identity, urbanization, trauma, and various forms of systemic violence.
Easton Arnouse is a 19-year-old creative artist, and photo documenter. Based in the home of his ancestors Native to the lower mainland of British Columbia. Son to Roxanne Charles from Se’mya’me’, and Joseph Arnouse of the interior Secwépemc people. His interest in Art creation outlines the importance of cultural identity, self, furthermore ones interconnection with nature and tradition. Easton is on a path to represent the need in preserving Indigenous methods, belief systems, and ways of living. “Although our lives as Indigenous people have changed; we are still rooted in ceremony and we are still in contact with our traditions. It represents our ability to adapt to these colonial ways of living without forgetting who we are as a people” Arnouse says. The influence of traditional art forms, and cultural teachings have led Arnouse to emerge as an Artist in an effort to improve the quality of Indigenous life. He uses Art as a tool to make these things possible for the coming generations of young Indigenous people and Artists. Easton Arnouse began this path as a young boy working alongside his mother, Roxanne Charles, and Master Carver Leslie Wells as an apprentice and Artist in training. His artworks appears on the likes of the Semiahmoo Minor Hockey jersey design “Honouring the children and survivors of residential schools” crest, which was unveiled on National Truth and Reconciliation Day in 2022. Arnouse also has designed for the City of Surrey “Skelkelosen” pollinator seed package that housed a blend of traditional medicines. The intent of his future work entails the personal connectivity with nature, and reclamation of native land/space and resources through photo documentation and Coast Salish design.