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Welcome to the on-line presence of Gestare Art Collective. These pages offer a portal for you to enter into the matrixial borderspace(s)* of our collaborative and creative art processes.
Gestare is Latin for the verb "to carry" in the womb. As women committed to living as process artists in relationship with each other, the earth, cosmos and all its inhabitants, we honour and practice gestation as an artful form of inquiry and pedagogy.
Gestare Art Exhibitions
Feminist Art Conference, Group exhibition, OCAD University, Toronto ON. Canada. Sept 13-27, 2015. [interactive installation of the Dream Scroll]
Conference Presentations & Workshops
Nap-Ins have been taking place nationally and internationally Rome; Puerto Rico; St. Catherines, Ontario; Winnipeg, Manitoba.
In February 2017 Barbara is taking the Dream Scroll to Alexandria, Egypt where she will facilitate a Nap-In at El Houria Centre for Creative.
Video of the presentation & Dream Scroll happening
Wombwalks: Connecting with the m/Other
Book chapter in Creating together: Participatory,
community-based and collaborative arts practices across Canada.
Barbara Bickel, Nané Jordan &
Medwyn McConachy
Co-editors
Diane Conrad and Anita Sinner.
Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Waterloo, ON.
Canada.
Video presentation for book launch April 9, 2015
Related Gestare Writings In Press
Placenta Wit: Mother Stories, Rituals, and Research. Edited by Nané Jordan. Demeter Press.
To order on-line at Demeter Press
Communal Dreaming: Enlarging the space of the possible through a postmodern curriculum of Nap-Ins.
Co-edited by M. Garbutt & N. Poenpagel called. The Mindful Eye: Contemplative Pedagogies in Visual Arts Education. Published by Common Ground in the Transformative Pedagogies in the Visual Domain Series.
Nané's art and Gestare have been blogged about at placentabenefits.info
Co-Residencies Retreats
See our Co-Residencies Retreats page to find out more about all of our past Co-Residencies and retreats.
A second iteration of the spontaneous Dakini* emerged from the spirits of the women as we unfurled our dreamscroll of Nap-In dreams onto a stray boom log at the beach in Victoria, British Columbia, evoking the untamed female freedom of this traditional Tibetan Buddhist yogini form.
(Like a trickster or the Fool in a Tarot deck, the dakini releases blockages in the energy field and melts frozen patters, so that the door of the mind is suddenly ajar and something new can enter. Dakinis are often connected to the phenomena of synchronicity and inexplicable coincidences of fate.
http://www.matrifocus.com/BEL09/noble.htm
*Dakini is a Tibetan word meaning "sky goer" or "sky-walking female"..
The Double Goddess - Vicki Noble photograph by Barbara
News
Releasing
Collaborative practice embraces, holds and sometimes is called to release co-creators from its midst. Gestare member Ingred Rose is diving into her memoir writing passion with the gestation of a new manuscript calling for intensive work towards completion. On Friday November 4 Gestare gathered in the realm of Skype for Ingred's releasing. She moves on with these words:
sad to say farewell to gestare. five years connection, can barely believe it! i’ve been a longtime collaborator throughout my life both as writer and teacher. this was an opportunity to explore my relationship to visual arts as well as a dip into academic inquiry. best of all our close-to-the-ground engagement with sounding together, napping & dreaming together, discovering what the phases of the moon revealed to usthrough ma positions. no! best of all, the monthly check-ins with these four exceptional women, mystics, artists to dream of other possibilities of expression and engagement in a world that lacks women’s wisdom and clarity. i’ll miss you all and am exceedingly grateful for the time and space we created together. thank you! ingred
nov 7 2016
Nané and Barbara in Paris, France (spring 2015) studying at the
Cité Universitaire Internationale and attended the Partie de
Lectures avec Héléne Cixous, Journé d'études internationale at
the Mainson H. Heine.
We engaged a daily practice of maternal goddess figures from
cross cultural neolithic imagery based on the work of Annine van
der Meer. Below is a video still from our Mother of the plants
pose in the universitaire garden.
20 women participated and 7 were part of releasing the dreams at the Tibre River later that day.
A participant Michelle Tarnopolsky blogged about her experience on her mapleleafmama blog.
Contact us
gestareartcollective@gmail.com
This website is copyright of Gestare Art Collective, 2017. All rights reserved.
