Cool Indians on Main Street
grunt gallery and Cool Indians On Main Street teamed up on a project for the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen! Charlene Vickers and Neil Eustache, the co-founders of Cool Indians on Main Street benchin collective invited Indigenous artists to make an open ended statement about Indigenous presence and benchin. What is benchin one may ask? Benchin is the act of gathering socially to sit on a bench to people watch, share ideas, stories, and just be together. Moving through the uncertain times of a pandemic, benchin is redefined and expressed differently. Benchin happens in individual moments, alone or within one’s social “bubble.” Benchin is expressed via face-time chats, or by sharing benchin pics on social media, or by a regular phone call. This summer Charlene Vickers organized a dream team of Cool Indian benchers to create a series of digital media works as the next iteration of what “benchin” could become.
Cool Indians Benchin Dream Team:
Lacie Burning
Robert Chaplin
Neil Eustache
Jeneen Frei Njootli
Whess Harman
Maria Hupfield (with collaborators Ester Neff, IV Castellanos)
Janine Island
Jenny Irene Miller
Casey Koyczan
Manuel Axel Strain
The Human Nature Collective (Daina Warren, Kirstin Snowbird, Robert Snowbird, Theo Pelmus, with Kevin McKenzie)
Tania Willard
Charlene Vickers
Bio
Charlene Vickers is an Anishnabe mixed media painter/installation artist on the outskirts of video and performance located in Vancouver, BC.