Featuring:

• Leila Sujir, artist and Elastic Spaces researcher

• Elder William (Bill) Jones, author and Elastic Spaces researcher

• John Latour, artist and Concordia University librarian and Elastic Spaces researcher

• Jorge Zavagno, Technical Director and Elastic Spaces member

To register for this program and receive a Zoom link, please email Heather Kehoe, Program & Event Coordinator.

Currently on view at the Gallery, forest documents by Montreal-based artist Leila Sujir is a large format video installation, including 3D and 2D projections, that chronicle the Walbran, the old-growth forests on the unceded traditional territories of the Pacheedaht First Nation on Vancouver Island.

Sujir approaches art-making with its research, testing, and making as a collaborative act. Like the roots in the forest, this exhibition is supported by an extensive network of collaborators:

• Jorge Zavagno as Technical Director was instrumental in the video production and designing the workings of the installation with Sujir as well as managing the book project, “Chronicles of the Forest” by Elder Bill Jones, of the Pacheedaht First Nation.

• John Latour, Concordia University Librarian and artist, collaborated with Sujir on the Reading Room in forest documents, and was editor of the book project, “Chronicles of the Forest.” Latour worked with Zoom transcripts to assemble the oral text into a written form.

• Elder Jones worked with Sujir and the Elastic Spaces team, as researcher and then author of the chapbook “Chronicles of the Forest.” The book emerged into a book form from their Elastic Spaces Zoom recordings (2020-2021) during the height of COVID19.

Join this panel discussion to hear more from Leila’s collaborators and hear how forest documents (2025) came together, with the production of three artworks on the Walbran old-growth forests (Forest Breath, 2018; Aerial, 2019) over a nine-year period and how the project continues.