The Cinematheque

In Person: Tiziana La Melia

Co-presented with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Or Gallery, this screening brings together works by visual artists Maggie Groat, Joan Jonas, Tiziana La Melia, and Krista Belle Stewart to interrogate an urban/​rural entanglement in terms of land and culture. Tiziana La Melia will be in attendance to introduce her work and participate in a post-screening talkback.

Krista Belle Stewart’s practice is founded on her Spax̌mn̓ land and asks questions of the archive and cultural ownership. This iteration of the site-specific Potato Gardens Band (2018) documents Stewart, while on her home territory, transmitting a live feed from her phone to a public audience at 221A’s Pollyanna 圖書館 Library located in Chinatown, Vancouver.

Joan Jonas’s I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances) (1976) contends with observation, perception, and fantasy, playing with narrative in the then-new medium of video. This work takes up a geography of displacement and desire, using performance and video to explore ways of seeing and the authority of objects and gestures.

Maggie Groat’s short video work Vegetables (2024) is made from found still images and references television advertisements, instructional videos, psychological experiments, and guided meditations to promote the consideration, growth, and consumption of vegetables.

As the characters in Tiziana La Melia’s film Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster (2023) take up the movement from the city to the country, the film uses satirical elements of celebrity and Y2K culture, particularly reality TV, to consider how this long-held dichotomy is viewed through a lens of contemporary popular culture.

Potato Gardens Band (Spax̌mn̓ Version)
Canada 2018
Krista Belle Stewart
20 min. Digital

I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances)
USA 1976
Joan Jonas
25 min. Digital

—intermission—

Vegetables
Canada 2024
Maggie Groat
25 sec. Digital

Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster
Canada 2023
Tiziana La Melia
60 min. Digital