The Residency was created with several purposes in mind: to expand the voices reflected in the Gallery’s programming and collections, to offer youth access to professional development in the arts, to provide exposure to alternative and contemporary approaches to art-making, and to cultivate intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and intercultural conversation within our local artistic landscape.
Launched in January 2025, the program was buoyed by generous support from the RBC Emerging Artists Project. The Residency welcomed 10 local teens who identify as Indigenous and/or as part of the Asian and/or African diasporas. Meeting twice a month, the cohort engaged in a series of hands-on workshops with local BIPOC professional artists, while also creating work based on the newly learned techniques independently. Program Coordinator, Kemi Craig, remarked, “There was a feedback loop that I witnessed in the knowledge transfer of connecting this amazing group of artists with local established BIPOC artists who mentored them through their dynamic contemporary art practices.”
Each session was designed to respond to the Gallery’s exhibitions and permanent collections, as well as introduce contemporary art-making practices that reach beyond traditional forms such as painting, drawing, and sculpture. “In our initial meeting, Kemi and I both remarked that in high school neither of us identified as artists because we weren’t great at painting or drawing, and it wasn’t until much later that we realized there were multitudes of ways artists are defined. It was important to us to share that with teens in the residency,” said Jeri Engen.
The 2025 cohort explored the themes in the exhibitions From Warhol to Banksy, From Balzar to Hunt, Beauty of Mending: Kintsugi and Beyond, and A View From Here: Reimagining the AGGV Collections, engaging in workshops that included sound collage with electronic musician Pesewa (Jeffrey Ellom), spray painting with Randy Babichuk, kanzashi with textile-based artist Everett Wong, and curatorial thinking with Madison Bridal. These dynamic experiences provided opportunities for personal growth, experimentation and professional development, not just for the youth participating in the program, but also for the artists as they picked up new skill sets in teaching.
Kemi Craig reflected, “At the beginning of the program, I remember thinking, this is the program that I would have wanted as a teen, this was the program that I wanted raising a racialized teen in Victoria, and to see it come to fruition has been beyond what I could’ve dreamed of. Being the Program Coordinator for the AGGV’s first art residency for Black, Indigenous and Teens of Colour has been one of my highlights both personally and professionally. From the first time reading through the teens’ registrations and meeting them in person, until their final exhibition, I learned and was so moved by each teen in the program.”
The BIPOC Teen Art Residency is a free program open to teens in grades 10, 11, or 12 who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or a Person of Colour from an equity-deserving group from January to June 2025.
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Feature Image: BIPOC Teen Art Residency participant, 2025. Courtesy of the AGGV.
