Roxanne Charles-George

Roxanne Charles-George is a mixed media artist, activist, curator, storyteller, and cultural historian of Strait Salish and European descent. She previously was a councilor, and continues to be an active band member of Semiahmoo First Nation in Surrey, British Columbia, promoting art, language, and culture. As an artist, she works with a wide range of media. She directly responds to the problems of colonialism, and documents issues that reflect her life experiences such as spirituality, identity, urbanization, food security, resource extraction, trauma, and various forms of systemic violence. As a contemporary storyteller and cultural historian, her goal is to touch, move, and inspire others through her work. Her work employs traditional Semiahmoo forms of knowledge such as visual representation, oral history, and ceremony.

Her work is in the collection of Surrey Art Gallery.

Exhibitions

Solo

The Strata of Many Truths, Museum of Vancouver, 2019.

Group

Ninety-Seven Days, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 2014 Views from the South Bank I: Histories, Memories, Myths, Surrey Art Gallery, 2015 Gross Density Parcel, AgentC Projects, 2015 Intangible: Memory and Innovation in Coast Salish Art, Bill Reid Gallery, 2017 Ground Signals, Surrey Art Gallery, 2017 how do you carry the land, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2018 Connecting Threads, Surrey Art Gallery, 2018 Li iyá:qtset – We Transform It, Reach Gallery Museum, 2019 The Lind Prize 2019 , Polygon Gallery, 2019

In 2020, Charles-George began a collaboration with Laiwan and Daniel Negatu on a story-based artwork installation, in conjunction with the opening of Simon Fraser University's School of Sustainable Energy Engineering in Surrey.

Education Charles-George holds two undergraduate degrees from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and completed a Master of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC. the White Rock Museum & Archives, and ArtsStarts.

Curating In 2017, Charles-George co-curated the exhibition Ground Signals at Surrey Art Gallery.

Publications

pensamientos en la Frontera, Moniker Press, 2018 Northwest Coast #5 Roxanne Charles, Or Gallery, 2019

Community involvement Charles-George has been vocal and influential in addressing issues related to water quality and infrastructure, to the Semiahmoo First Nations. She has participated in organizing land-defense, and movement against fossil fuel expansion projects such as the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Awards Charles-George received a Paul Harris Fellow Award from the Semiahmoo Rotary Club in 2015. In 2018, she was recognized with a Surrey Civic Treasure award in 2018, which honours those “who have achieved excellence in the production of the arts and/or made significant contributions to the development of arts and heritage in the City of Surrey and beyond,” for her work as an artist and educator. In 2019, she was nominated for the Lind prize.