Charlene Vickers

White?

White let's see..I don't really divide my world-view up into categories of colours or race. I'm mostly into art and painting that expresses human emotions, desires, love and sadness. It's about being human, relating to one another and FEELING.

RED?

I Love Pow-Wow Music and Dancing, whenever I hear it or experience the whole thing I feel like crying. It is so truly amazing.

Where do you and where don't you fit into these worlds?

I think you can go anywhere and do anything you want to these days. Sometimes I want to have something so bad though it doesn't happen. That happens quite often. But that is life. I try something else. Any place I feel secluded, disrespected, snubbed or ignored is not worth being a part of.

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Charlene Vickers is an Anishnabe artist living and working in Vancouver. Trained as a painter, she graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (94) and attained a BA from Simon Fraser University in Critical Studies of the Arts (98).

Born in Kenora Ontario and raised in Toronto her art explores her Ojibway ancestry and her experiences growing up and living in urban spaces.

She explains her body of work as: "My work concerns memory and expression of Aboriginal identity where materials carry social and cultural significance. In the past my work has dealt with the commodity aspect of Aboriginal culture selling an idealized First Nations body. Issues of racism and marginalization are exposed in the works presenting a realistic rather than romanticized reality for Aboriginal peoples. I reinvented typical Native objects sold to tourists and combined them with personal comments on urban living for aboriginal peoples.