Call for submissions: The Collective Memory Project

Our writer-in-residence and friend Anne Pasek is currently collecting submissions for an exhibition that will take place this October and November at the U of A’s Faculty of Extension galleries in Enterprise Square.

Of the project, she writes:

Artists and community members are invited to submit artwork to a forthcoming exhibition addressing the legacy and future inheritance of eugenic ideas in Alberta. Exploring forgotten narratives, lost histories, and contemporary anxieties, The Collective Memory Project will investigate and make visible the process through which personhood is unequally distributed in society.

Eugenics- the policies, practices and attitudes that seek to foster or deter certain human traits in a population- typically don’t enter into how we collectively construct Canadian history and national identity. And yet, eugenic values were widely accepted in our past, and continue in many subtle ways into our future. Between 1929-1972, 2834 individuals were sterilized in Alberta, often without consent, to prevent ‘feeble-mindedness’: a legacy that is still largely unaddressed. Today, Canada’s immigration policies actively screen out the disabled while institutions are used in part to quarantine those deemed ‘unfit’ from the rest of the social body.

To make an appeal to collective memory, the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada is organizing an exhibition of contemporary art and archival images in an attempt to make these histories and ideologies visible. Visual artists and community members are encouraged to submit work that explores the trajectory of eugenic thought, issues of memory, and the ethics of biotechnology.

Find out more on the project and how to submit here or contact Anne at pasek@ualberta.ca.