Programming
March 29, 2025
12:15-12:25 PM
Welcome and Land Acknowledgement
Carmel Whittle, No Borders Art Festival
Indigenous artist and founder of No Borders Art Festival, Carmel Whittle, will offer a land acknowledgement to welcome attendees and artists to the inaugural Object//Project Art Book Fair.
12:30-1 PM
//Talk//
Echoes from this Land: Visioning and Revisiting Truth & Reconciliation
Carmel Whittle, No Borders Art Festival
Join Carmel Whittle for a talk on the project Echoes from This Land: Visioning and Revisiting the Truth & Reconciliation 94 Recommendations.
Artists and creators from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities of different backgrounds, ages, genders, ethnicities, abilities, incomes, nationhood, and nationality came together to openly discuss and better understand the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and the 94 Calls to Action. They were then encouraged to share their understandings of their chosen Call through their own lenses and lived experiences, and to visually interpret the Call in the form of print editions. Carmel will speak to how the project was conceived, project collaborators from across the country, and hopes for the project. An exhibition featuring some of these prints from creators across Canada will be on display at OPABF.
echoesfromthisland.ca
1:15-2:15 PM
//Workshop//
Memory Workers Lab: Preserving Your Personal and Community History
Ben Compton,
Everyone Archives
This workshop will dive into the practice of documenting, archiving, and sharing the stories that you hold closest. What does it mean to preserve history? What tools can help you store and organize your precious photos, journals, and objects for safekeeping? What are some first steps when taking on an archiving project? Participants are encouraged to bring items from their personal collections and connect around the shared experience of doing 'memory work'.
2:30-2:50 PM
//Talk//
Community and Preserving Textile Practices Through Zines
Maria Patricia Abuel, habihabi po
Maria Patricia Abuel of Toronto-based Filipino/a/x artist collective habihabipo will discuss the making of their zine maghabi magkatabi (meaning “weave side by side” in Tagalog), a research-creation project with the purpose of co-creating and sharing historical material and embodied knowledge about sustainable Philippine textile and weaving practices.
3-3:40 PM
//Talk//
Sustaining A Risograph Small Press in Canada
Jesjit Gill and Jenny Gitman, Colour Code
Colour Code will explore the precarity of being an artist-printer and trace the evolution of Risograph printing in art and comics since the 2010s. They’ll also discuss the importance of a Canada-wide Risograph community and other resources for anyone interested in starting a Risograph-based small press.
3:50-4:40 PM
//Panel//
Libraries as Sites of Resistance and Creation
Facilitator: Cara Tierney
Panelists:
- Alice Holland, Ottawa Trans Library
This panel explores the relationship between libraries, books, access and expression. How can libraries expand personal and collective narratives towards liberation and creation? How can libraries function as safe spaces for intellectual freedom? Ottawa Trans Library will discuss how libraries may be used as safe spaces for collective organizing and the preservation of counternarratives, particularly for marginalized individuals. Artist-publisher Alicia Nauta will discuss how in her individual practice, libraries act as sites of knowledge and artistic creation, in ways that push the boundaries of traditional research-creation processes.
4:50-5:40 PM
//Panel//
From Counternarratives to Collections: Making Artists’ Publications Public in Canada
Facilitator: Jason St-Laurent, SAW
Panelists:- Tess Davey, Art Metropole
- Louis Rastelli, ARCMTL
What is the role of Canadian arts organizations in championing artists’ publications to the public? Join Tess Davey from Art Metropole and Louis Rastelli from ARCMTL in a discussion about their efforts towards the recognition and celebration of Canadian artists’ books, zines and multiples in the public realm. From creating platforms to promote and preserve local independent culture, to building new audiences and communities, to developing partnerships with provincial and federal cultural institutions to grow institutional collections, panelists will discuss these various initiatives, their current organizational projects, and what might be next.
Exhibitor Projects
12-6 PM
Parlour
//Exhibition//Echoes from this Land
Artists and creators from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities of different backgrounds, ages, genders, ethnicities, abilities, incomes, nationhood, and nationality came together to openly discuss and better understand the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and the 94 Calls to Action. They were then encouraged to share their understandings of their chosen Call through their own lenses and lived experiences, and to visually interpret the Call in the form of print editions, such as linocuts, woodcuts, stone and plate lithography, etching, photo-etching, 3D printing, collagraph, screen printing, digital media, performance, or hand/digitally altered art creation and production.
echoesfromthisland.ca
1-4 PM Parlour
//Drop-In Workshop//
Make Your Own Zines
In collaboration with
- Tales
from Behind the Counter
- Ottawa Trans Library
Join local zinesters Becca Yates and Kiran Niet, alongside team members from the Ottawa Trans Library for some casual zinemaking at OPABF. Drop by the zinemaking table at any time. Creative prompts will be provided. No experience necessary, all materials provided.
1-4 PM Parlour
//Performance//
die psychokinetische perfopopart therapie
roylu
die psychokinetische perfopopart therapie is a book; a workbook, to be exact, to be used with a participative performance art project of the same title. The participative action is between two
persons, details of which are initiated and mediated by the workbook, whose content facilitates
the same. While the book and the interaction it encourages uses the word ‘therapie’, the workexplicit disavows any claim to having any therapeutic outcomes accepted as such by the canadian
psychokinetische perfopopart-therapie association.
DJs
1-6 PM Woodside Hall
After Party
7-11 PM
Ten Toes Coffee House & Laundry
837 Somerset Street West
Offsite Programming
Exhibition: Archives by Artists
March 12-April 12, 2025
galerie UQO
Pavillon Lucien-Brault
101, rue Saint-Jean-Bosco
Entrée portes 6 & 17 Local A-0115
Zine Club with Possible Worlds
In collaboration with Ottawa Public Library
March 20, 2025
6-8 PM
Ottawa Public Library, Rosemount Branch
18 Rosemount Avenue
//Tour// In collaboration with Art Metropole
Art Metropole Collection
With Dominique Taylor, Head of Reference Services, Library, Archives and Research Fellowships Program
March 28, 2025
10 AM start
National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
/Tour// Conservation Labs Tour
Prints, Drawings & Photography
With Ainsley Walton, Senior Conservator
March 28, 2025
1 PM start
2 PM start
National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
March 30, 2025
1-5 PM
Arts Court
2 Daly Avenue
//Exhibition Tour//
Bucko Art Machine, SAW Gallery, 1-2 PM
With Jason St-Laurent, Curator
//Exhibition Tour//
Grotto, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2-3 PM