Marcella Bienvenue May 25, 1946 - February 24, 2025Exhibition Dates: November 26–29, 2025Opening Reception: Friday, November 28 at 6PM About the Artist:Marcella Bienvenue was born in Stettler, Alberta, and after completing high school in Edmonton, she attended the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary, where she majored in painting while also exploring printmaking and photography. Her prints are represented in significant collections across Canada including the Canada Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Although she began her art career in what she termed “static visual art” she soon began to call herself an “intermedia” artist, working in film, video, and installation. She is most remembered for her groundbreaking work in performance art that combined spoken word, still and moving images, sound and movement. Her work has been presented at the Pleiades Theatre, the Glenbow Museum, the Nickle Arts Museum, the Walter Phillips Gallery, the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, and the Women’s Building in Los Angeles. In addition to her extensive career as an artist, Marcella curated and facilitated projects at Parachute Center for Cultural Affairs, Green Fools Theatre, CSIF, The New Gallery, and EMMEDIA, as well as writing for national arts media and co-founding FUSE magazine. About the Exhibition:When word of Marcella Bienvenue’s death in February of 2025 spread through the arts community, condolences poured in from colleagues across Canada and beyond. Friends felt it would be fitting to celebrate her life and work in a public exhibition, recognizing an artist whose forward-thinking and innovative practice left a valuable legacy in this region. This exhibition is a chance to honour one of those peers who helped plant seeds that still flower— who made maps and signposts that we still follow to this day. We have gathered rare and seldom-seen images and footage from early artist-run activity, video and film documents, posters and photos from the 1970s to the 1990s that offer an overview of Marcella’s wide-ranging activities. The organizers felt it was appropriate that in addition to Marcella’s original works on paper (silk screen and lithograph prints) and a video compilation of old and re-constituted footage, to also include her collection of slides, cassette tapes, and texts in their original formats, offering a glimpse into her practice in the context of early arts activity in this city.
