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The Alternator is engaging artists and the global community in a creative cultural conversation about the values surrounding the Olympics. We invite you to visit REACT2010.COM for an entertaining and engaging experience showcasing photography, video, drawing, painting, poetry and other artistic expressions of the modern day Olympic Games which we hope will lead to an examination & appreciation of diverse cultural values.

The Alternator gratefully acknowledges generous project support from the Central Okanagan Foundation.

*This is not an official project of the Olympic Games

Nous invitons les artistes et la communauté mondiale à s'engager dans un échange créatif et artistique entourant les valeurs mises de l'avant par les Jeux Olympiques. Visitez le site REACT2010.COM pour une expérience divertissante et stimulante qui met en vedette photographie, vidéo, dessin, peinture, poésie et autres formes d'expressions artistiques portant sur les Jeux Olympiques de l'ère moderne. Il en résultera, nous l'espérons, un échange et une appréciation de la diversité des valeurs culturelles.

The Alternator remercie le Central Okanagan Foundation pour sa générosité et son appui au projet.

*Ceci n’est pas un projet officiel des Jeux Olympiques

Combining performance and audience participation, this exhibition is both a colorful and seductive critique of the stereotyping of Asian women. The gallery audience will contribute by placing their origami blossoms on a wig component of the exhibit during the opening night. For the public component of the exhibition Jihee will also do a street performance wearing the wig featured in her exhibition. This performance component will be the day after the opening, on a busy Saturday afternoon, when the artist will walk downtown with the wig, taking off the paper blossoms one by one, to 'transplant' them on random spots along the way to the waterfront.

Korea-born Canadian, Jihee Min deals with the notion of displacement and cultural intersections through her self-referential works. Min received an MFA in Studio Arts in 2008 from Concordia University where she was the recipient of a Studio Arts Award. She obtained her BFA at Ontario College of Art & Design in May 2005 and received the Sir Edmund Walker Scholarship, Carmen Lamanna Scholarship and Sumo Art & Technology Award.

Bose will create an installation combining sound, video and large scale supersaturated colour images lit with black lights. The themes of this work cover residential school and the juxtaposition of archival images of N'laka pamux people and Jesus Coyote, a mythic trickster figure Bose has created that is a hybrid of Christianity and Canadian First Nations spiritual beliefs. There is a dreamlike surreal quality to the work, as the artist comes from a culture that is known for shamanism, visionaries and painting their dreams on the rocks.

Living in Kamloops, B.C., Chris Bose is a creator, rebel, disruptor of the established order and, most of all a survivor. Chris is from the Nlaka'pamux nation, which means "People of the Canyon," referring to the B.C. region where the Fraser and Thompson Rivers join. Through his artwork Chris wrestles with demons in the form of the traumatic effects of residential school on his parents, aunts and uncles, and how that trauma has rebounded on his generation. Bose is a writer, multi-disciplinary artist, musician and filmmaker, who has read and performed at Universities, theatres and coffeehouses at all points from Victoria to Montreal, as well as at the BC Festival of the Arts as a literary delegate to the Talking Stick Aboriginal Arts Festival in Vancouver and the Word on the Street Festival in Toronto.

This Alternator/Ullus collaboration builds on existing partnerships with an eye to communicating local Indigenous stories and knowledge with the non-Indigenous community through innovative technologies and contemporary approaches. This exhibit will feature screenings of new films combined with audio and visual archives of the En'owkin Centre in the main gallery and a photography exhibit of portraits of Okanagan women by Bert Crowfoot in the window space. The work will focus on endangered species in the Okanagan, in particular, the Yellow Breasted Chat (Spirit Song Keeper story). This is an important opportunity for cross-cultural exchange and provides support for the careers of regional and Indigenous female artists.

Ullus artists: The Ullus Collective is a regional group of independent aboriginal artists who have been working together on numerous project-based activities and screening events since 1996. They began formally meeting in 1995 with the intent to pool together talents and resources to enable themselves to produce media art works and to learn more about the art form.

Tracey Kim Bonneau is an independent media artist and storyteller. She is a member of the Syilx Nation from the Okanagan; born and raised on the Penticton Indian reserve in British Columbia. Bonneau is currently on faculty at the En'owkin Centre in Penticton, and is coordinator for the National Aboriginal Professional Artist Program and chair of the Ullus Collective.

Mariel Belanger was raised as a member on the Okanagan Indian Reserve and is Okanagan and French Canadian decent. She is a writer, performer, model and an emerging filmmaker and photographer. She graduated from Media and Communications General Arts and Sciences in Ottawa. As a member of the Ullus collective since 2004 she has produced award winning short films such as Wayward Soul and Mothers Milk.

Alternator artist: Roja Aslani (1978) is a Persian Canadian artist currently living and working between her hometown of Kelowna and Edinburgh. In her practice she explores different forms of nostalgia. Her current work explores nostalgia towards past film and fiction. Roja has a Psychology degree from the University of Alberta, a BFA from The University of British Columbia - Okanagan and an MFA in Sculpture from The Edinburgh College of Art. Her work has shown in Kelowna, Vernon, Vancouver, Toronto, Edinburgh, Berlin and London.

The annual members' show allows local artists to exhibit their work in a professional space, creating a dialogue about current artistic production in the community. The exhibition, held in conjunction with the annual membership drive, is a fundraising event for the gallery.