INTERVENTION:

 

A Community Space for Empowerment:
Le Centre Artisanal des Femmes

On-going - January 1998-January 2000

 



Le Centre Artisanal des Femmes (CAF), located at 207 Duluth Ave. E., Montreal, is a non-profit community artisanal workshop that provides a transitional and healing space for women.

Their mission is to encourage women to become skilled, creative, choice-making individuals active in the growth of a supportive community organization. The membership is diverse but specifically targets women from economically marginalized groups, recent immigrants, the under and unemployed, and women who are homeless, mentally or emotionally challenged.

CAF is a space where women can learn artisanal crafts such as weaving, book-binding, stain-glass, sewing and fabric printing. Through the acquisition of such skills women gain self-confidence, a sense of purpose, artistic training, and a feeling of belonging.

As one of the contributing artists for the But Now I Have To Speak project I have been working with the students, staff and board of directors at CAF to assist in the growth of the organization from a Centre which provides a social service, to one which can foster both social action and social change. Rather than this work manifesting itself as one intervention producing a public art work, this project is about the process of working with a community based group over a substantial period of time to create change within the organization which will continue on after the completion of the But Now I Have To Speak project, and beyond my own involvement.

 

top


ARTIST STATEMENT:




My work - photography, performance, and community interventions - are about making visible those processes or practices which, while seemingly "natural", are mediated and motivated.

From the management of nature in parks, to socialization through children's games and education, to the systematic exclusion of marginalized persons from social and cultural resources, I try to place gloves upon invisible guiding hands.

I am attracted to the small, to details, to that which would go unnoticed.

By focusing on what is otherwise overlooked or ignored - what a community throws in the garbage, or the shifting seasons through time and place - I want to encourage a second look, a thoughtful inquiry, or a mindful acknowledgment of one's presence and its effects where on life, work.

My constant hope is to engender dialogue which questions power and empowers those who feel they lack it.


top



BIOGRAPHY:

 

 

Caroline Stevens is a Montreal based activist, artist and educator. For the past five years she has been working in community based groups on issues of women and violence; and women's empowerment through art production.
Stevens is concomitantly a Ph.D. candidate in Special Individualized Programs at Concordia University and is writing a dissertation entitled: Making Space: The Spatial Politics of Cultural Resistance.

 

top

 

 

 



CV:

 

EDUCATION:    
1996-2000

Concordia University
Ph.D.Special Individualized Programs:
Art History & Cultural Studies

 
1994-1996

Concordia University
M.A. Art History

 
1992-1994

York University
Special Student
Visual Arts

 
1988-1992

Wilfrid Laurier University,
Honours. Bachelor of Arts
Major: Political Science
Minor: Fine Arts

 
SCHOLARSHIPS & AWARDS    
1998

Social Sciences
and Humanities
Research Council
Doctoral Fellowship

 
1998

Concordia University
External Grant
Holder Doctoral
Fellowship

 
1997

The J. W. McConnel
Doctoral Fellowship
Concordia University

 
1994

Department of Art History
Entrance Award
Concordia University

 
EMPLOYMENT    
1998

Course Instructor
Art History 367/2
20th-Century Art
and Architecture
Department of Art History

 
1997

Course Instructor
Art History 381/2
Feminism and Art History,
Department of Art History
Concordia University

 
1997

Course Instructor
Art History 392/4
Historiography
Department of Art History
Concordia University

 
1996

Course Instructor
Art History 381/2
Feminism and Art History Department of Art History
Concordia University

 
1996

Teaching Assistant
Art History 392/4
Gender Issues
Concordia University

 
1994-1998

Research Assistant
Art History
Concordia University

 
1993-1994

Director & Curator
The Samuel J. Zacks

Art Gallery

York University

 
1992-1994

Adult Education
Program Coordinator
The McMichael Art Collection,
(ON)

 
VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE    
1999

Centre Artisanal des Femmes
Board of Directors,
Montreal
Quebec

 
1997-1998

Centre Artisanal des Femmes
Montreal
Quebec

 
1996

Auberge Transition
(Shelter for Victims of Conjugal Violence)

 
PERFORMANCES, INTERVENTIONS & EXHIBITIONS    
1999
In Progress,
January 1998 - November 1999

Community Intervention
A Community Space for Empowerment:

Centre Artisanal des Femmes
Montreal, Quebec, CA

 
1999
Upcoming,
August 27th

Performance/Intervention
Lies My Father Told Me:
Day Long Performance
Montreal, Quebec, CA

 
1999
Upcoming,
June - July

Internship
Bread and Puppets,
a Radical Community Theatre Collective
Glover, Vermont USA

 
1999
March 31

Performance/Intervention
Musical Chairs:
What are They Teaching You?

Canadian Federation of Students Demonstration
Montreal, Quebec, CA

 

1999
February 25

Performance/Intervention
The Discreet Tourist
The Golden Ring Gallery (unsolicited)
Prague, Czech Republic

 

1998
October - November

Intervention
Spend/Your Soul
Daily ritual of using currency inscribed with provocative text problematizing consumerism
Montreal, Quebec, CA

 
1997
November 1-30

Group Exhibition
Gifts from Brazil, The Travel Diaries of Two
(with Cynthia Hammond)
Festival for Human Rights
Gallery ISART
Montreal, Quebec, CA

 
1996
October - November

Installation
Isnšt This Sexy?

An Exploration of Childlike Clothing for Women Private Residence
Montreal, Quebec, CA

 
top  




BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Baddely, Oriana and Valerie Fraser, Drawing the Line: Art and Social Change in Latin America. (London: Verso, 1989).

Becker, Carol, The Subversive Imagination. (New York and London: Routledge, 1994).

Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture. (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).

Braidotti, Rosi, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

Broude, Norma and Mary Garrard, eds., The Power of Feminist Art. (New York: Harry Abrams Press, 1994)

Callahan, Nancy, The Freedom Quilting Bee. (Tuscalossa: The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

Deutsche, Rosalyn, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1998).

Dorfman, Areil, Scraps of Life: Chilean Aprillera, Chilean Womn and the Pinochet Dictatorship. (Trenton: The Red Sea Press, 1978).

Doy, Gen, Seeing and Consciousness: Women, Class and Representation. (Oxford: Berg, 1995).

Duncan, Nancy, ed., Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality. (New York: Routledge, 1996).

Edeleman, Murray, From Art to Politics: How Artist Creations Shape Political Conception. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Felski, Rita, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Ferguson, Winnie Jean, Arts as Employment Training for Persons with Developmental Handicaps. Ph.D. Dissertation, The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities. (1989)
.
Gablik, Suzi, The Reenchantment Freire.

Goldman, Shifra, Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and The United States. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Hayden, Dolores, The Power of Place: Urban Landscape as Public History. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996).

Hennessy, Rosemary, and Chrys Ingrams, eds. Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives. (London and New York: Routledge, 1997).

Hooks, bell, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. (New York: The New Press, 1995)

_____., Killing Rage: Ending Racism. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995).

_____., Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation. (New York and London: Routledge, 1994).

_____., "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination," in Lawerence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cutural Studies. (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).

_____., Ain't I a Women: Black Women and Feminism. (Boston: South End Press, 1981).

Kester, Grant, ed., Art Activism and Oppositionality. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

Lacy, Suzanne, ed., Mapping the Terrain: New Genre in Public Art. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995).

La Duke, Betty, Companeras, Women and Social Change in Latin America. (San Francisco: 1985).

Lippard, Lucy, Get The Message: A Decade of Art For Social Change. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984).

Maracle, Lee, I Am Woman: A Native Perspective of Sociology and Feminism. (Vancouver, Press Gang Publishers, 1996).

Marino, Dian, Wild Garden: Art, Education and The Culture of Resistance. (Toronto, Between the Lines Press, 1997).

Martin, Randy, Performance as Political Act: The Embodied Self. (New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1990).

Narayan, Rural Development Through Women Programme. (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1989).

Nochlin, Linda, and Herny Millon, eds., Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978).

Pearce, Lynne, "'I' The Reader: Text, Context and the Balance of Power," in Penny Florence and Dee Renyolds, Feminist Subjects, Multimedia Cultural Methodologies. (Manchester: Manchester Univeristy Press, 1995).

Pollock, Griselda, Generation and Geographies in the Visual Arts. (New York and London: Routledge, 1996).

_____., Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. (London and New York: Routledge, 1988).

_____, "Women, Art and Ideology: Questions for Feminist Art Historians," Womens's Art Journal. (Spring Summer 1983).

Predeger, Elizabeth, WomanSpirit: A Cooperative Inquiry Into Healing Through Art For Women with Breast Cancer. Doctoral Dissertation: School of Nursing University of Colorado, 1995.

Raven, Arlene, ed., Art in the Public Interest. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989).

Robin, Regine, "Toward Fiction as Oblique Discourse," Yale French Studies. (1980).

Roth Moira, ed., The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America, 1970-1980. (Los Angles: Astro Artz, 1983).

Schneider, Rebecca, The Explicit Body in Performance. (New York and London: Routledge, 1997).

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. (New York and London: Routledge, 1988).

Tickner, Lisa, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-14. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

_____., "Feminism, Art History and Sexual Difference," Genders. (Fall 1988).

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1989).

Wallis, Brian, Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art).

The Women's Collective of St. Columbia House, Hope is in the Struggle. (Toronto: The United Church Publishing House, 1996).

 

top | symposium bilbiography