Hungry: Storytelling & Food | Panel Discussion | with Christina Hajjar, Kimberley Moore and Jenna Vandal facilitated by Kathryn Gwun-Yeen 君妍 Lennon and Kyla Pascal
SATURDAY September 10, 2022 | 3pm
Co-hosted in Gallery Two with Hungry Zine
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art | 1, 460 Portage Ave | Winnipeg MB | Canada
Christina Hajjar is a queer femme first-generation Lebanese Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 Territory. Her practice considers intergenerational inheritance, domesticity, and place through diaspora, body archives, and cultural iconography. Hajjar was a recipient of the 2020 PLATFORM Photography Award and received an honourable mention for the 2021 Emerging Digital Artists Award. Her ongoing project, Don’t Forget to Count Your Blessings contemplates food culture, memory, and diasporic place-making through hookah lounge narratives and aesthetics. Hajjar is the senior editor of Herizons Magazine and co-editor of Carnation Zine and qumra journal. Her zine Diaspora Daughter, Diaspora Dyke won 2021 Best Artzine at the Broken Pencil Zine Awards. Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash Magazine, C Magazine, The Uniter, CV2, Prairie Fire, and PaperWait. Learn more at https://christinahajjar.com/
Kathryn Gwun-Yeen 君妍 Lennon is the co-editor and co-creator of Hungry Zine. Kathryn was born and raised in Edmonton/Amiskwacîwâskahikan. Her maternal grandparents were once small-scale farmers and subsistence market vendors in Hong Kong, and her paternal ancestors left Ireland long ago during the famine. The acts of growing, cooking and sharing food and food knowledge mean many things to her; they are a way of honouring those who have come before, imagining just and sustainable futures, and cultivating relationships to people and place.
Kimberley Moore has a Master of Arts in Oral History from Concordia University, when she began her education in public history and in the preservation of oral history collections. She is currently an Adjunct Professor, and the Programming and Collections Specialist at the University of Winnipeg Oral History Centre, where she teaches workshops in oral history, assists in ongoing oral history projects, and co-manages the Oral History Centre’s archival collections. Kim’s areas of expertise are in the methodological, ethical, and technological challenges of doing oral history, and in the preservation and accessibility of oral history collections. She is a collaborator in the Manitoba Food History Project and is the project’s website designer, the editor of the project’s story maps: “Stories of Food in Place,” the project’s photographer, and co-author of the forthcoming book: Manitoba Food History Atlas.
Kyla Pascal is the co-editor and co-creator of Hungry Zine. Kyla is an Afro-Indigenous (Dominican/Métis) woman born and raised in Amiskwaciwâskahikan / ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Edmonton). Over the years Kyla has worked with a number of non-profit organizations focusing on anti-oppression, advocacy, and community-building. Her experiences and interests are centred around Indigenous solidarity, sustainability, community health, and food justice. The goal of her work is to build more resilient, just, and healthier communities.
Jenna Vandal is a Métis naturalist born and raised in St Boniface, the heart of the Métis homeland. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Native Studies from U of M, and spends her time actively trying to reclaim her culture and language.
Jenna leads Native plant identification walks for organizations, governments and individuals, and thoroughly enjoys sharing these teachings with Indigenous youth to strengthen their sense of belonging, and help them reclaim skills and knowledge that was taken from them through colonization.
Jenna loves spending time in nature when she can. She has an infant daughter at home, as well as a dog and cat and loves to go on daily walks with all of them, taking time to appreciate the Native plants all around them.