Walking and Memory Mapping with artist Marlene Creates 30th April 2025

Living Maps presents

Walking and Memory Mapping with artist Marlene Creates

Canadian artist Marlene Creates has used memory mapping in her work since 1986—maps drawn both by her and by others for her. Memory maps are examples of alternative maps, also called participatory maps, counter maps, living maps, deep maps, and even radical maps. Every map tells a story and alternative maps tell alternative stories.

In this presentation, Marlene will show works done in collaboration with Indigenous Inuit and Innu elders in northern Labrador, and her own elderly relatives on the island of Newfoundland. Her most recent work centers the perceptions of about 200 school children who came for multidisciplinary guided walks in the 6-acre patch of old-growth boreal forest where she has been living and working since 2002 on the island of Newfoundland/ Ktaqmkuk.

following the talk Marlene will facilitate a hands-on workshop: Site + Memory = Place: A Memory Map Drawing Workshop guiding participants in drawing their own thematic, layered memory map of a place that is or has been important to them. All materials for the workshops are included.

About the artist: Marlene Creates is a Canadian environmental artist living and working on the island of Newfoundland/ Ktaqmkuk. Her work has been presented in over 350 exhibitions and screenings across Canada and internationally. She has received many awards, including a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for “Lifetime Artistic Achievement”; the Order of Newfoundland & Labrador, the province’s highest honour; and an Honorary Doctorate (D. Litt.) from Memorial University of Newfoundland. She says, “Underlying all my work has been an interest in place—not as a geographical location but as a process that involves layers of memory, multiple narratives, ecology, language, politics, emotions, and both scientific and vernacular knowledge.” Marlene Creates acknowledges that she lives and works on the island that is the unceded ancestral homeland of the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq peoples. With her work, she strives to create meaningful relationships between people and place, while honouring over 8,000 years of stewardship of the provincial territory by a succession of Indigenous people. www.marlenecreates.ca

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