Sandra Semchuk (born 1948) is a Canadian photographic artist. In addition to exhibiting across Canada and internationally, Semchuk taught at

Emily Carr University of Art and Design The Emily Carr University of Art and Design (stylized as Emily Carr University of Art + Design and abbreviated as ECU) is a public university of art school, art and design located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 1925 as the Van ...

from 1987 to 2018. In 1998, Presentation House, Vancouver, B.C. programmed "How Far Back is Home ..." a 25-year retrospective of Semchuk's career highlighting her relationship to identity, morality and land. Sandra was awarded a grant from 2008 to 2015 from the Canada First World War Internment Fund to complete her book on

Ukrainians Ukrainians (, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. Their native tongue is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, and the majority adhere to Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, forming the List of contemporary eth ...

in Canada, ''The Stories Were Not Told: Stories and Photographs from Canada's First Internment Camps, 1914-1920''.

Career

Semchuk was raised in a close-knit Ukrainian-Canadian community, which greatly informed the theme of interconnected identity in her practice. Her work from the late 1970s involved dialogue and collaboration with her parents, partner, and young daughter. Semchuk's early photographic works have been said to belong to a "broad general category of documentary". Her photographic portrait works from this era, more specifically her 1982 series of eighty-seven photographs entitled ''Excerpts from a Diary,'' address themes of death and family whilst presenting a narrative of "self-examination and transformation" through her use of self-portraits and images containing domestic and prairie backgrounds. Penny Cousineau-Levine, the author of ''Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination'', writes of ''Excerpts from a Diary'' that the journey of Semchuk's protagonist “follows the structure of classic initiatory voyages of descent and return, death and rebirth, the prototype of which is the Greek legend … of Orpheus, who, grief-stricken at the death of his wife, descends to the underworld to convince the god Pluto to allow her to return to earth.” Cousineau-Levine, Penny. Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2003.DèsLibris Canadian Electronic Library. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1 June 2004. Web. 17 Sept. 2016. p.223 Cousineau-Levine goes on to state that these photographic sequences "take the shape of heroic descent into darkness and peril, into an experience of death and nothingness followed by rebirth, a transformed relation to the self, and a renewed connection to life", something that she claims offers “an understanding of death that is particularly relevant to Canadian photography.”

Collaboration with James Nicholas

James Nicholas and Sandra Semchuk were married until Nicholas died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2007. Nicholas was a

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

artist from

Nelson House, Manitoba Nelson House () is a designated place in northern Manitoba, Canada adjacent to the Nelson House 170 Indian Reserve, which is part of the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation. It is located approximately northwest of Thompson. The Hudson's Bay Company ope ...

. He suffered extensively in residential schools as a child. Their collaborative work focused on the multiplicity of relationships to land, cultural geography, settler and indigenous relationships and memory.

Collaboration with Skeena Reece

In 2013, Sandra Semchuk worked with performance artist

Skeena Reece Skeena Reece (born 1974) is a Cree, Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Gitksan, and Métis artist based in Canada whose multi-disciplinary practice includes such genres as performance art, "sacred clowning," songwriting, and video art. Background Skeena Ree ...

on a piece titled ''Touch Me'' for the exhibition ''Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.'' During this performance, Reece and Semchuk struggle with themes of forgiveness and mother-daughter relationships as Reece bathes Semchuk.

Education

* 1983 Master's degree in Photography,

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; ) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1889 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature, it is the state's second oldest university, a flagship university in th ...

Semchuk, Sandra. Coming to Death's Door: A Daughter/father Collaboration: October 19 to November 24, 1991, Presentation House Gallery. North Vancouver, BC: Gallery, 1992. Print. * 1970 Bachelor of Fine Arts,

University of Saskatchewan The University of Saskatchewan (U of S, or USask) is a Universities in Canada, Canadian public university, public research university, founded on March 19, 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatch ...

, Saskatchewan * 1970 Professional "A" Teachers Certificate,

Province of Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the United States (Montana and North Dako ...

Select solo exhibitions

* 2016 ''The Stories Were Not Told'', Comox Valley Art Gallery, Courtenay, BC * 1998 ''How Far Back is Home . . . .'', Presentation House, Vancouver, B.C. * 1991 ''Coming to Death's Door'', a daughter/ father collaboration, Presentation House, Vancouver, B.C. * 1991 ''Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life'', Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Prince George Art Gallery, Prince George, British Columbia; University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario;

Robert McLaughlin Gallery The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public art gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest public art gallery in the Regional Municipality of Durham, of which Oshawa is a part. The gallery houses a significant collection of Canadian conte ...

, Oshawa, Ontario;

Art Gallery of Windsor Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

, Windsor, Ontario;

MacKenzie Art Gallery The MacKenzie Art Gallery (MAG; ) is an art museum located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The museum occupies the multipurpose T. C. Douglas Building, situated at the edge of the Wascana Centre. The building holds eight galleries totaling to of ...

, Regina, Saskatchewan; Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta; Floating Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Gallery 44, Toronto, Ontario * 1990 ''Paralleling the Bird'', Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario;

Contemporary Art Gallery A contemporary art gallery is normally a commercial art gallery operated by an art dealer which specializes in displaying for sale contemporary art, usually new works of art by living artists. This approach has been called the "Castelli Method ...

, Vancouver, British Columbia * 1986 ''Ritual, the Photographic Sequence'', Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario * 1986 The Coburg Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia * 1982 ''Excerpts from a Diary'',

Mendel Art Gallery The Mendel Art Gallery was a major creative cultural centre in City Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Operating from 1964 to 2015, it housed a permanent collection of more than 7,500 works of art. The gallery was managed by the city-owned Saskatoon ...

, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan * 1979 The Photographers Gallery, London, England * 1975 The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan * 1973 The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Awards

Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts The Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts are annual awards for achievements in visual and media arts in Canada. Up to eight awards are presented annually, each with a prize amount of $25,000. Created in 2000 by then Governor General ...

(2018)

Collections

* Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver * Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa *

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

, Regina *

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) ( (MCPC)) was a gallery of Canadian contemporary art and documentary photography. Founded in 1985 and affiliated to the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), it was housed at the National Gallery ...

, Ottawa *

Dunlop Art Gallery The Regina Public Library is the citywide public library system of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Regina Public Library is established under the provisions of ''The Public Libraries Act'', 1996. The general management, regulation, and control ...

, Regina *

Edmonton Art Gallery The Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) is an art museum in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The museum occupies an building at Churchill Square in downtown Edmonton. The museum building was originally designed by Donald G. Bittorf, and B. James Wensley, alt ...

, Edmonton * McKenzie Art Gallery, Edmonton *

, Saskatoon * Mount St. Vincent University of Art Gallery, Halifax *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York * Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon *

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

, San Francisco * University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Publications

* Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah. "Sandra Semchuk" in
Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History
'' Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023. * Semchuk, Sandra. 2018. "The Stories Were Not Told: Canada's First World War Internment Camps." The University of Alberta Press. Print. * Semchuk, Sandra, and Laurel Tien. "Telling Story! Voice in Photography: An Online Visual Art Critical Studies Program Evaluation." International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 5.3 (2004): n. pag.ProQuest Education Journals roQuest Web. 17 Sept. 2016. * Semchuk, Sandra. Toward Real Change: My Photographic Work Done in Saskatchewan from 1972 to 1982 and in New Mexico from 1982 to 1983. Diss. U of New Mexico, 1983. Albuquerque, New Mexico: U of New Mexico, 1983. Simon Fraser University Library Catalogue. Web. 17 Sept. 2016. * Semchuk, Sandra. 1991. Coming to Death's Door: A Daughter/Father Collaboration. North Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, 1992. Print. * Semchuk, Sandra. 1989. Moving Parallel: Reconstructed Performances from Daily Life. Toronto: Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, 1989. Print.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Semchuk, Sandra 1948 births Artists from Saskatchewan Canadian photographers Living people People from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts winners