The multimedia Collective Spell Package is a mailed offering that includes: postcards, stickers, notes on medicinal plant knowledge, and divination and meditation guides to co-create a better future. Each component is envisioned as a practiced manifestation of the themes explored in the screening Spellbound (expanded).
The package contains:
-2 postcards designed by Gabrielle Tesfaye
-A set of stickers by Fallon Simard
-A recipe for an aromatherapy tincture with a guiding mantra to anchor new energies in one's home by Jacqueline Célestine Joachim
-A Tea recipe and accompanying information from Cassandra Thompson's workshop on the proprieties of Rosemary and the Afro-diasporic relationships to the plant on Turtle Island.
This project is funded by the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen's University.
Artists:
Gabrielle Tesfaye
Gabrielle Tesfaye is an interdisciplinary artist versed in painting, animation, film, puppetry and interactive installation. Her work is rooted in the African diaspora, ancient art traditions and cultural storytelling from her Jamaican and Ethiopian background. Outside of exhibiting painting works, she uses her art in the animation studio, creating personal and cultural narrative films. Tesfaye’s background in film started at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, and continued at Mahidol University International College in Bangkok, Thailand. Tesfaye obtained her Bachelor of Fine Art from the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Tesfaye has been recognized in publications such as Vogue, AFROPUNK, and Majestic Disorder Magazine (print, UK), and has screened and exhibited internationally including London, New York, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zanzibar, India and Sweden. She is the recipient of a series of scholarships and awards, including the Milwaukee Film Brico Forward Fund, and Mary Nohl Suitcase Export Fund. She directed the highly acclaimed film, The Water Will Carry Us Home, was an official selection of Black Star Film Festival, and won best experimental film at Reel Sisters of the Diaspora (NYC). Tesfaye is currently expanding with her art through creating new projects, traveling, and guest speaking at various universities and organizations.
Fallon Simard
Fallon Simard is an Anishinaabe-Metis artist, educator and policy writer. Through, memes, workshops and videos, he layers text and images, transposing popular and informal methods of public address to carry pointed political critique. His artwork and pedagogical practices captures how racism and colonialism intercede to form the bases of capitalism’s devastating attempts at cultural erasure and genocide, but also reveals its ultimate failure to control the terms of indigeneity, which remains present and lived. Thirza Cuthand in a review in Canadian Art describes Simard’s work “as firmly situated within a strong history in Canada of experimental Indigenous video art. Their experimental, politically charged work gets to the heart of issues of Indigenous sovereignty and struggle.” Simard graduated from OCAD University through the interdisciplinary Masters of Art, Media and Design program. He has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, curated for the Queer Art Festival in Toronto, written policy for the Yellowhead Institute at Ryerson University and participated in Plug In ICA’s Summer Institute.
Jacqueline Célestine Joachim
Jacqueline Célestine is a Montreal-based meditation program creator who works with mantras and sacred images (seals/mandalas/light codes). She is also a Tantric Heart and an Energy Science practitioner, and a member of Rainbow Bridge Universal Channel.
Jaqueline Célestine's spiritual practice centres the opening of the heart's consciousness, soul and spirit to allow for holistic healing and well-being. Her programs, books and decks of cards provide meditative tools for more profound transformations, aligning the heart, soul, body, and mind. They support harmonizing our inner grace by encouraging us to radiate the beauty of our full potential.
lwrds duniam
lwrds (pronounced ‘lords’) is an interdisciplinary artist developing critically-engaged work that celebrates and centers the liberation of 2-Spirit, non-binary, queer, trans, intersex, Black, Indigenous, racialized, and invisibilized peoples everywhere. lwrds’ work responds to their personal journey of healing sexual trauma at the intersections of gender variance, Blackness and Indigeneity (complicated by an imposed latinidad they reject due to its colonial underpinnings), and disability for reasons of neurodivergence and chronic illness. A born storyteller with a deep commitment to healing personal and collective traumas, their material approach is an intuitive process of learning with other non-human beings, valuing energetic exchanges with all that exists.
Attend the Spellbound (Expanded) screening to be entered into a raffle to win this package. Winners will be contacted by email to arrange shipping.