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Lorraine Klaasen Celebrates 40 Years as a Performer

9/9/2021

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The ECH is happy to celebrate and share news of Lorraine Klaasen, ECH advisory circle member, on her 40th year as a singer, artist, performer, and dancer. 

For her 40th anniversary, Lorraine will be performing in concert in Montreal, on October 5th at the Cabaret Lion d'Or. For those who are unable to see her concert in person, the event will also be live-streamed and accessible to all.

For virtual tickets, please visit this link: 
https://lepointdevente.com/tickets/clo211005002

In the generous spirit of Lorraine, the event will also feature nine other musicians on stage alongside her. These musicians include Musical Director Mongezi Ntaka, Assane Seck, Noel Mpiaza, Andre Whiteman, Medad Ernest, Rob Christian, Nadia Theobal, Carine Agboton, and Noam Guerrier brought together for this celebratory event. 
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ECH Summer Break

8/18/2021

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ECH  SUMMER BREAK

August  9  -  September  8

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As of August 9, the ECH will be on summer break until September 8. After an incredibly successful first year, we are using this time to reflect on the future and recharge. We are cognizant of the time and energy poured into this collective, and we are truly grateful to the supportive community in London and beyond, in addition to our incredible contributing members, contributing editors, advisory circle, and institutional and community partners. 

Stay tuned for the fall season as we continue with our extensive programming! Here is a sneak peak of what is to come...


  • Another installment of Sleepwalking: 7,000 steps in solidarity with Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor
  • Intercambio launches new projects in October
  • Partnership with Support Project Space to host in-person exhibitions from September - November 
  • Partnership with Edna Press for the Vancouver Art Book Fair
  • Palestine + The Environment with TPFF (Toronto Palestine Film Festival)

In the meantime, best wishes from the Embassy Cultural House. 
Enjoy the warm weather and stay safe! 

Image: Poster from the archives, on the anniversary of Siting Resistance (September 1990). ​
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OPEN CALL: PANDEMIC GARDENS

8/5/2021

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Online Exhibition hosted by Embassy Cultural House
 
Organized by Rachel A. MacGillivray and Ron Benner with the assistance of 
Jamelie Hassan, Olivia Mossuto and JoAnna Weil
 
Deadline: Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Live: January 2022

When the world went into lockdown last March, so did my creative brain. I hit a wall in my studio practice that was so thick and heavy I couldn’t even pick up my materials, and nothing I had been making felt important anymore. The only place I came alive was in my garden. Planting gave me purpose, seeds shooting up gave me hope, pulling weeds and clearing land helped me step outside of my worries. We spent 5 months in isolation with our toddler son and most of that time was spent together, planning and tending our gardens – it’s how we survived the separation, anxiety, and pressure. It’s the thing that got us through and we’re not the only ones. Now, it’s time to share our gardens.

Whether your experience was painting fantasy gardens while in lockdown, visiting public green spaces, taking care of a beloved house plant, containers on your balcony, or working in your own garden - tending vegetables, flowers, or weeds - we want to share your experience. Let’s recognize and acknowledge these connections with the natural world.
 
- Rachel A. MacGillivray, July 28, 2021
 
I am reminded of an exhibition that Jamelie and I did in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2013 about the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca, titled The World is a Garden Whose Walls are the State. The title was inspired by a quote from Ibn Khaldun's The Muqaddimah (1377 AD) which was one of the first universal histories of the world…now, the world is a garden whose walls are the pandemic.

 - Ron Benner, July 28, 2021


Please submit an image of your pandemic garden experience and include a short statement about the location, date, and your relationship/connection/experience to and with the “garden” during the pandemic.

Deadline for your contribution: September 7, 2021
Image size: 300 dpi, no smaller than 800 pixels on the shortest side.   
An artist fee of $30.00 will be paid for each digital contribution.
 
For questions about the exhibition, email: 
embassyculturalhouse@gmail.com

Photo Credit: Rachel A. MacGillivray, In the Garden, 2020​
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The ECH launches online exhibit in tribute to Bob McKaskell

6/30/2021

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We are honoured to present this spectacular online exhibit  "A Guest + A Host = A Ghost," curated by Hamilton-based Ihor Holubizky and designed by Oliva Mossuto to celebrate the life of our good friend, independent curator and writer Bob McKaskell. It was one year ago today that Bob passed away on June 30, 2020. 

Holubizky has conceptualized this multi-layered project and has written that it " is a tribute to Robert McKaskell and his professional facets as art historian, curator and educator. Rather than memorialize what he did, it is better to channel the spirit and active intelligence, and embody how he thought. Marcel Duchamp is the armature for this exhibition-orchestration.  Robert was a Duchampist, although he and I never spoke of Duchamp directly—and perhaps because one never knows who’s listening.  In the mid-1980s he devised an “Homage to Marcel Duchamp on the occasion of the centennial of his birth,” mounted at the McIntosh, Forest City and (then) London Regional galleries."

Special thanks to Hugh Barrett, Kelowna Art Gallery, Museum London, and the Art Gallery of Windsor. We also thank all the artist-contributors.  All works are courtesy and copyright of the artists, with exceptions and additional credits as noted.

  • Lois Andison (Canadian)
  • Dianne Bos (Canadian)
  • Lynn Dreese Breslin (American)
  • Hyang Cho (Canadian, b. Republic of Korea)
  • Paul Collins (Canadian, French)
  • Christos Dikeakos (Canadian, b. Greece)
  • Aganetha Dyck (Canadian)
  • Wyn Geleynse (Canadian, b. Netherlands)
  • Dave Gordon (Canadian)
  • Richard Grayson (British)
  • Brad Isaacs (Mohawk and mixed heritage)
  • Suzy Lake (Canadian, b. U.S.A.)
  • David Merritt (Canadian)
  • Ken Nicol (Canadian)
  • Gary Pearson (Canadian)
  • Alexander Pilis (Canadian, b. Brazil)
  • Eric Robertson (Metis/Gitxsan)
  • Michael Snow (Canadian)
  • Gary Spearin  (Canadian)
  • Christine Walde (Canadian)
  • Jinny Yu (Canadian, b. Republic of Korea)

Before he passed, Bob was living between Port Dover, Ontario and Oaxaca, Mexico. While in Oaxaca he decided to study Spanish and he had just initiated a program of curating exhibits of Oaxacan artists in his apartment located in the centro historico of Oaxaca. We have created a page that highlights the work Bob had begun in Oaxaca within our project called Intercambio/Exchange with Oaxacan artist Lissette Jiménez Díaz, and text written by Marnie Fleming.

Bob taught Contemporary Art History for many years at Western University. He was a huge supporter of both Canadian and international artists and had a commitment to challenging art practices  which included conceptual art, performance works and independent artists' projects. While in London, he was involved in programming at the Embassy Cultural House, the Forest City Gallery, Museum London and the McIntosh Gallery. He also worked at the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary where he built strong friendships and made contributions to the arts community across Canada. We have so many fond memories of Bob - especially close to our hearts is the survey exhibition he curated Embassy Cultural House - 1983 - 1990  at Museum London in 2012.
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Conversation with Freda Guttman, artist & activist in support of Palestine: May 23, 2021 @ 16:00 EDT

5/18/2021

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Register for the online event here
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Freda Guttman, The Earth is Closing in on Us, 2005, this work was included in the March 8, 2021, ECH International Women's Day exhibit: Go; Rise and Strike. ​ From her artist statement: This work fuses archival images of the Nakba with lines of text in red from the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, the great Palestinian poet (1941- 2008). The Nakba of 1948, (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic), created three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees who fled to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The haunting, iconic photographic images of the Nakba evoke the suffering they experienced and still do – imprinted forever are the forlorn lines of forsaken people moving over the horizon into the unknown, at the beginning of their long journey into dispossession and statelessness. Mahmoud Darwish himself shared that journey, having experienced imprisonment, statelessness and exile himself.
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Freda Guttman, The Right of Return
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Freda Guttman
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Salah D. Hassan

The ECH is appalled by the ongoing violence, rising tensions, and the devastating loss of life in Palestine and Israel. The toll —particularly on civilians, including women and children — has already been far too great. 
 
Please join us for a conversation with Freda Guttman, Montreal-based artist/activist and  Professor Salah D. Hassan, Director of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan on Sunday, May 23 at 4 pm EDT. 

Freda has been a constant voice of solidarity to Palestinian people over a lifetime of activism.  She lives in Montreal and has worked as a printmaker, photographer and  laterally, as an installation artist.

​She has been a longtime supporter of the Embassy Cultural House, participating in the 1984 International Women's Day exhibit, as well as our most recent online IWD exhibit: Go; Rise and Strike in March 2021.

Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and internationally. Guttman has made her art practice and her political activism come together in a series of installations. 

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Among her installations that focus on Palestine/Israel are Diminish Your Cup and Two Family Albums: Canada Park, from 1994 to 2004.  

Join us in solidarity with all those who support a just peace in the Middle East. We are calling for an immediate ceasefire. 
 
As an artist-run project, the ECH condemns the May 15th unjustified ransacking and raid by Israeli Defense Force soldiers on Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art & Research, an independent art centre in Bethlehem. The raid, which destroyed computers and other office equipment, follows the burning of their urban farm earlier in the week. Attacks against cultural centres and other civil society organizations, including the media, are against international law.
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The Dar Jacir urban farm burnt to the ground. Photo: Aline Khoury, credit: Dar Jacir newsletter, May 17,2021

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ECH partner's with the Undergraduate Summer Research Internship Program at Western University

5/15/2021

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Matthew Dawkins
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Mary Helen McMurran
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The Embassy Cultural House welcomes two new contributors to our community: Matthew Dawkins and Mary Helen McMurran. 

Matthew Dawkins is an undergraduate studying English and Writing, with a double major in the interdisciplinary School for the Advanced Studies in the Arts & Humanities (SASAH) program at Western University. He is also the recipient of Western's Undergraduate Summer Research Internship (USRI). He has joined the ECH as a contributing editor. 

Mary Helen McMurran is the faculty supervisor for the internship and Associate Professor in Western's Department of English and Writing Studies. Their collaboration with ECH highlights the public humanities and its aim of connecting the university with the city of London as well as a national and international audiences.

As part of the internship, Matthew is creating new projects on anti-Black racism for Embassy Cultural House. His George Floyd Project features local Black communities and artists in a commemoration of one-year since Floyd's killing by Minneapolis police. The occasion prompts reflection on the dramatic and far-reaching impact of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The ECH is grateful for Western University's continued support. Established in 1983, the ECH was a community-driven gallery and hosted interdisciplinary programs. It closed its physical doors in 1990. In 2020, the ECH was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and community website. 
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The ECH and London's Old East Village BIA to promote local arts

5/11/2021

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Art by Simon Shegelman commissioned by the Old East Village BIA to promote the area.
​The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) and the Old East Village Business Improvement Area (OEV BIA) are pleased to announce a collaboration to support and promote local arts and culture in the historic Old East neighbourhood in London, Ontario.
 
The ECH, an online community arts and cultural space, has physical roots and history in east London going back to its original founding as the Embassy Cultural House in 1983, formerly located in the old Embassy Hotel on Dundas St. The site of the hotel is currently being developed by Indwell as the future Embassy Commons, an affordable housing project, to open in the spring of 2022.
 
The Old East Village BIA works to support businesses and cultural programming, alongside citizens of the area. Through the Old East Village Community Improvement Plan, they are a part of the continued development of a vibrant and much-loved part of London.
 
These two organizations have ambitious plans for a community arts program  that will both engage local artists as well as future residents of the Embassy Commons, adding to the cultural life of Old East Village. A number of exciting projects  are in the planning stages: from storefront displays of art linked to QR codes (#cloudtostreet), to an online exhibition of the art murals of OEV on the ECH website. There are also discussions for a potential  arts festival, linked to the reopening of Dundas St., in spring 2022. Stay tuned for updates. Please contact us for more information. 
Read the essay 'at the Ech' by Marwan Hassan on his memories of art and culture

The old Embassy Hotel was located at 732 Dundas Street East at the heart of the Old East Village. The Embassy Cultural House was established in 1983, as a community-driven gallery and hosted interdisciplinary programs. It closed its physical doors in 1990.  In 2020 the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and community website. 
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Read the catalogue on the Embassy Cultural House publish in 2012 for an exhibition at Museum London curated by Bob McKaskell.
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Rendition of the affordable housing project "Embassy Commons" to be built on the old site of the Embassy Hotel, 2020. The façade of the building will include a three floor high replica of Jamelie Hassan 1978 watercolour "embassy at nite".
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Jamelie Hassan, Embassy at Nite. The watercolour was donated to the Museum London's permanent collection by the former Embassy Hotel owner and Jamelie's sister Helen Haller in 2019.

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The ECH is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Susanna Heller

5/10/2021

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Susanna Heller (1956-2021)
On Oct 13, 2020, Susanna Heller  wrote to ECH editor Tariq Hassan Gordon:

Hey Tariq it’s Susanna reaching out to you! Wyn shared your email and told me you were setting up the embassy cultural house website. Feel free to use my entire website or any part of it. It is simply SusannaHeller.com
Also if you need any other info just ask. I’m so pleased it’s YOU who is doing this! Damn I wish we could meet in person with your mom and dad too of course! For now I’m just sending a giant hug and kiss and all my love.
Susanna
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The Paris Vision ECH tabloid issue Sept./Oct./ Nov. 1984, page 6, Susanna Heller in conversation with Jamelie Hassan...

The Embassy Cultural House is deeply saddened to learn of the death of the remarkable painter Susanna Heller, who passed away on May 5, 2021.

Many of Susanna’s paintings involved elaborate installations made up of assemblages of smaller paintings on paper and were based on her walks around the city.  Her love of painting and her love of walking were intricately connected. Her sketch books were the notes that reflected her curiosity and intense observation of her surroundings, whether walking around the metropolis of NYC or the cities of Europe.

ECH co-founder Jamelie Hassan first met Susanna in 1984 when they were both living at La Cité internationale des arts in Paris through the Canada Council for the Arts. Jamelie remembers her time with Susanna:

"Over the months that we overlapped, we enjoyed many conversations about culture and numerous wanderings around the city, so conscious of the way the city and its abundant museums and galleries, parks and gardens, kept us outside walking, rather than working inside our respective studios.

"Our group in Paris at the time included my young son Tariq, age 11, Ron Benner, Wyn Geleynse and his daughter Mara, age 11. The Paris Vision ECH tabloid issue from Sept./Oct./ Nov. 1984 records this unusal collection of creative people in dialogue with Susanna over that period.  In 1986, Susanna came to London to present a solo exhibition of her recent works at the Embassy Cultural House. Her connections with the London community of artists, writers and curators deepened at that time.

"Recently, in October 2020, she reconnected with us and the ECH, presenting one of her startling paintings, Eyes in a Bleak World, 2020 for the open call online exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight coordinated by Ron Benner. In her communications to us she expressed her pleasure to be involved with our reinvigorated collective.

Susanna was an inspiring artist, a generous colleague, and a warm and supportive friend. Her death leaves an enormous gap in the arts community both in Canada and the United States, where she had made her home and studio in Brooklyn, NYC."

 
Here is a revealing conversation from Feb. 6, 2020 with her longtime friend Medrie MacPhee that conveys the genuine spirit, humour, intelligence and beauty of our friend and artist Susanna. May she rest in peace. Her website is  online here.
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October 15, 2020, photo from Susanna Heller, "Tonight’s sunset over the East river looking at manhattan !! Xoxo susanna"
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Susanna Heller, "Eyes in a Bleak World", 2020, oil paint, mixed media on canvas
Artist Statement for the work by Susanna Heller "Eyes in a Bleak World" for the ECH's inaugural online exhibit Hiding in Plain Sight launched on October 30, 2020: “Eyes in a Bleak World “ is a recent painting completed in 2020.  The sky and earth in this oil painting are dominated by the intensity of two eyeballs wrenched from some creature and which soar comet-like through a scorched and haunted landscape. The power of sight in this painting is menacing and speaks to the destructive state of the world which we are witnessing.

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Join us for a casual conversation with Duncan deKergommeaux on May 16

5/9/2021

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Join Embassy Cultural House Advisory Circle Member Judith Rodger for a conversation with Duncan deKergommeaux on May 16, 2021 @ 1:30 pm EST.  

 Painter Duncan deKergommeaux has had a distinguished career that spans seventy years. Judith is a former student of Duncan’s, colleague and friend for fifty years, and their conversation is sure to bring back many memories.

For twenty-three of those years—1970 to 1993—Duncan taught drawing and painting at Western University in London, Ontario, with sabbaticals and leave spent in New York City and Paris.

Since 1953 deKergommeaux has had over fifty solo exhibitions from Victoria, British Columbia to St John’s, Newfoundland. His works have been included in over one hundred group exhibitions.

​During his time in London, his work was exhibited in many different venues, from the McIntosh Gallery and Museum London to alternative spaces such as Trajectory Gallery, Forest City Gallery and the Embassy Cultural House, where his paintings were exhibited in 1983, its first year of operation.

He currently lives in Ottawa where he is still making his marks in his home studio. For further information see Duncan's website. 
REGISTER FOR THE ONLINE EVENT May 16 @ 1:30 HERE

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ECH welcomes Ira Kazi as a Contributing Editor

5/7/2021

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Iraboty (Ira) Kazi
We are pleased to welcome Ira Kazi as our newest contributing editor to the Embassy Cultural House.
 
Iraboty (Ira) Kazi (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario, studying Art History and Visual Culture. She is the current editor of Western’s Visual Arts Department’s graduate students' journal, tba: Journal of Art, Media, & Visual Culture.  Ira divides her time between London and Hamilton and works part-time at the Hamilton Public Library
 
Ira is currently leading a project to celebrate and feature Asian Canadian artists in our community.

Ira joins the ECH's growing team of contributing editors including; Andreas Buchwaldt, Matthew Dawkins, Charlotte Egan, ​Shelley Kopp, Olivia Mossuto, Niloufar Salimi, Mackenzie Smith, Michelle Wilson, and Jade Williamson.


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Virtual Tour of “Hiding in Plain Sight” for Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival: NOW LIVE!

5/6/2021

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For the 2021 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is proud to highlight the digital, photo-based, and photo-related artworks from this exhibition in an immersive 3-D format, produced by contributing editor Andreas Buchwaldt. The virtual tour can be viewed below, or at the Hiding in Plain Sight exhibition page. 

The virtual tour re-imagines the Embassy Cultural House in the present, where it was originally located at the Embassy Hotel on 723 Dundas Street. Andreas Buchwaldt visualizes an alternate future for the ECH by inserting an archival image of the building’s facade into its original location with an online panoramic mapping tool. In actuality, the Embassy Hotel was destroyed in 2009 following a large fire. In addition to the sympathetic treatment of the facade, the inside of the building has been mapped to match the original interior of the Embassy Cultural House. The expresso bar and booths remain fixed in their same orientation, surrounded by works of art. 

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In October 2020, the Embassy Cultural House presented its inaugural virtual exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight, organized by Ron Benner, inspired by the 2020 book of the same name by St. Louis-based journalist Sarah Kendzior. In her book, Kendzior describes the former US President Donald Trump’s administration as “a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.” 

View the ECH's Scotiabank Contact page here. 


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ECH mourns passing of the Curator of Education at Museum London Steve Mavers

4/25/2021

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The Embassy Cultural House  is saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Steve Mavers, their colleague and friend at Museum London. We extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends and numerous colleagues in the cultural and educational community. He will be greatly missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing and working with him.

The last exhibit that Steve curated at Museum London is on display and is an exhibit of public and high school student art on the environment titled Our World of Nature: A Student Exhibition which opened on March 13, 2021. Please see Museum London's tribute to Steve Mavers here. 

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ECH welcomes Michelle Wilson as a Contributing Editor

4/21/2021

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​We are pleased to welcome Michelle Wilson as our newest contributing editor to the Embassy Cultural House.
 
Michelle Wilson is an artist and mother of French/British descent. In her current work she makes palpable the presence and absence of bison, as well as their inseparability from the land and its people. In the Euro-American archive, bison bodies have been used to convey colonial knowledge systems, and their story of survival has been used to perpetuate myths of 'settler saviours.'

This is the legacy that Wilson, as a feminist of settler descent, studying in colonial institutions, has inherited and is confronting. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Art and Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario.
 
She is participating in the GardenShip & State project curated by Jeff Thomas and Patrick Mahon which will be presented in September 2021 at Museum London. An in-progress version of Michelle's multi-media (non-linear) dissertation can be viewed here.

​Michelle is one of the exhibiting artists and a contributing editor assisting in the coordination with the upcoming Earth Day 2021: Stop Extinction! Restore the Earth online exhibit live April 22, 2021. She also participated in the International Women's Day Exhibit: Go; Rise and Strike.  Michelle’s new role as a contributing editor will strengthen the ECH’s already strong community partnership with Gardenship and State. 

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Stop Extinction! Restore the Earth; Artists Address Climate Crisis

4/19/2021

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Ron Benner Remains in association with..., Digital colour print, 2021
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Mark Kasumovic, " Vault #3" [From series: A Human Laboratory], Photography, 2015

Exhibition Launches Online: EARth DAY - April 22, 2021
Register for the online event on May 2nd, 2021 @ 1:30 EST
Presented by Embassy Cultural House and the GardenShip and State Project
London, ON
 
Join us Sunday, May 2, at 1:30 p.m. for A Virtual Exhibition Opening and Video Presentation. The event will begin with a Land Acknowledgment and welcoming by Mary Lou and Dan Smoke.
 
The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) and GardenShip and State are pleased to present a virtual group exhibition Stop Extinction! Restore the Earth to celebrate Earth Day, April 22, 2021. Works in the exhibition are by artists from within the ECH community and Gardenship and State participating artists. The 50 artworks that make up this ambitious project take on a broad range of issues related to the climate crisis and other threats to our ecology, emphasizing decolonial practices as central to addressing this urgent moment.
 
A concise animation, “Up in Smoke,” by the youngest presenter in the exhibition, 15-year-old Kian Saadani-Gordon, portrays the blue planet with a giant, billowing smokestack protruding from its body. It is a poignant yet frightening reminder of our predicament. Equally caustic in its critique of human culpability regarding the plight of gaia are the ‘earthly non-delights’ portrayed by Carole Conde and Karl Beveridge in their photo-triptych, “Futures.” 

Numerous other artists in the exhibition, including Jessie Amery, Stephen Cruise, and Jamelie Hassan, also allude to the garden – as by turns a troubled sanctuary and a site of potential regeneration and possibility. In works by Sharmistha Kar, Roland Schubert, Jean Spence, and Christine Walde, rivers, lakes, and waterways feature as emblems of devastation, but also as reminders of human and more than human indebtedness to the earth’s water sources as central to survival.

GardenShip and State co-curator Jeff Thomas invokes colonization and decolonization, reminding us of the inseparable linkage between stewardship of the planet and the legitimacy of Indigenous land claims. Perhaps nowhere in the exhibition is the spectrum of human experience, aspiration, and often failure as fully pronounced as in the juxtaposition of Ron Benner’s digital photograph of seeds, grains, beans and pottery shards, labelled, “Remains in Association with cultural deposits: 10,000 years before present era,” and Mark Kasumovic’s stirring black and white image of a vast, florescent-lit cavern, entitled, “Vault #3 [from the series, A Human Laboratory,”2015]. Benner’s colourful, living archive, and Kasumovic’s frozen image of an empty Svalbard Global Seed Vault, are the exhibition’s alpha and omega moments.
 
Stop Extinction! Restore the Earth contributors include: ​Jessie Amery, Tariq Amery, Ron Benner, Paul Chartrand & Michelle Wilson, Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge, Stephen Cruise, Tom Cull,  Susan Day, Holly English & Olivia Mossuto, Mike Farnan, Michael Fernandes, kerry ferris (1949 - 2016), Jan Figurski, Mireya Folch-Serra,Fatima Garzan, Joan Greer, Dave Gordon, Tariq Hassan Gordon, Jamelie Hassan, Fern Helfand, Lisa Hirmer, Sharmistha, Kar, Mark Kasumovic, Brian Lambert, Patrick Mahon, Kim Moodie, Catherine Morrisey, Troy Ouellette, Jill Price, Judith Rodger, ​Kian Saadani-Gordon, Niloufar Salimi & Mohammad Tabesh, Jayce Salloum, Jenna Rose Sands, Roland Schubert, Sandra Semchuk, Carolyn Simmons, Mary Lou & Dan Smoke, Ashley Snook, Jean Spence, Diana Tamblyn, Jeff Thomas, Bernice Vincent (1934 - 2016), Esther Vincent, Christine Walde, Paul Walde, and Jade Williamson.
 
Collaborating Organizations
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​www.embassyculturalhouse.ca is a volunteer digital project originally launched in July 2020 to recognize the contributions of the arts and culture community which came of age in London in the 1960s-1970s. Artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner and jazz musician Eric Stach founded the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990), located in the restaurant portion of the Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas Street in East London.
 
In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and website. ECH emphasizes activism, community engagement, and diverse and intergenerational collaboration. As a not-for-profit collective, the ECH has quickly grown into a network of 100 contributors from across Canada and around the world.
 
GardenShip and State is an artistic research project conceived at the intersection of environmental critique, decolonial theory, and artistic practice. Involving a diverse group of twenty Canadian-based and international artists and thinkers, the project examines urgent issues confronting us today: climate change and global warming and the measures states and non-state actors can, or should, take to resolve them. These challenges are of global concern because local actions and global effects are intertwined, as shown by the destructiveness of the environmental crisis on humans and more than humans experiencing colonialism.
 
Co-curated by Patrick Mahon and Jeff Thomas, an on-site exhibition planned for Museum London (Sept.2021 – Jan. 2022) will play an important role in promoting regional discussions about the consequences of living in the Anthropocene. The project began with a Launch Workshop held in Fall 2019 at Museum London and Western University. Since then, some of its participants were featured presenters in a panel for this year’s Words Festival (Nov. 2020), and a slide show of works by seventeen of the project’s collaborators was projected on the giant screens overlooking the Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River, also known as Thames River) from Museum London’s Centre at the Forks.

The GardenShip and State exhibition in Fall, 2021, will be a multi-sensory experience that inhabits the Ivey Galleries at Museum London, and spills into other areas of the Museum, inside and out. Comprising textiles, photography, sculpture, video, and installation, the exhibition emphasises environmental critique and decolonization through projects that are aesthetically rich and culturally complex. (

For further information, please contact embassyculturalhouse@gmail.com

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ECH welcomes Mary Lou and Dan Smoke to the Advisory Circle

4/14/2021

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Dan and Mary Lou Smoke in front of the London Music Hall for the 2019 Forest City London Music Awards. Photo credit: Karen Nordin
The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is pleased to announce that award-winning Indigenous journalists and activists, Mary Lou and Dan Smoke have joined the ECH Advisory Circle. They recently received the Atlohsa Peace Award for their work on truth and reconciliation. You can listen to their interview with Chris dela Torre on the CBC here. 

Mary Lou is also well-known for her performances and was recognized by the London Music Hall receiving an award in 2019 for her traditional and contemporary singing. She is a member of the Ojibway Nation, from Batchawana, on Lake Superior, and Dan is Seneca Nation from the Six Nations Grand River Territory. They met in 1972/3 and were married in the Onondaga Longhouse in a traditional Indigenous Haudenosaunee Wedding Ceremony in 1977. They have been happily married for 43years.

Working together they have hosted "The Smoke Signals Aboriginal Radio Program," since 1990 and continue with this Western University campus-based radio program offering interviews with Indigenous cultural workers and advocates from across Turtle Island. They have collected an extensive archive and books over the years related to their decades of working as journalists and advocates.  From 1999-2019 they worked with the London CTV Station.

ECH co-founders Ron Benner and Jamelie Hassan said, “Dan and Mary Lou Smoke have dedicated their lives to building bridges between the peoples of Turtle Island.  We are honoured to have Dan and Mary Lou’s friendship over the years and look forward to collaborating with them on future ECH projects.”

Dan and Mary Lou Smoke said, “Ron and Jamelie have stood in solidarity with Indigenous communities through their art work and activism for decades, and we are pleased to join the ECH Advisory Circle and contribute to this innovative digital arts and cultural project.” 

You can visit their page on the ECH website here.

Other members of the ECH Advisory Circle include: Samer Abdelnour, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho,  Lorraine Klaasen, Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner and Lucas Stenning. 


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ECH welcomes Niloufar Salimi as a Contributing Editor

4/12/2021

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We are ​pleased to welcome Niloufar Salimi as our newest contributing editor to the Embassy Cultural House.
 
Niloufar is a visual artist based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  She primarily uses drawing and minimal mixed media to form a narrative between certainty and ambiguity.  Salimi completed her MFA at Western University and received a BFA from OCAD University.
 
Salimi is a multiple recipient of Ontario Arts Council Grants. She currently resides in Toronto. In addition to her studio practice, she works as a Gallery Assistant and Teaching Artist at the Power Plant Contemporary Gallery.
 
Niloufar is one of the artists exhibiting and also assisting in the coordination with the upcoming Earth Day 2021: Stop Extinction! Restore the Earth online exhibit live April 22, 2021. She also participated in the International Women's Day Exhibit: Go; Rise and Strike. 

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ECH to partner with the Toronto Palestine Film Festival on Fall 2021 art program

4/6/2021

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Toronto Palestine Film Festival 2021 design by Hamilton-based illustrator Sama Al Zanoon.
The Embassy Cultural House and the Toronto Palestine Film Festival are pleased to announce a new partnership to collaborate on arts and cultural programming. The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is looking forward to develop an online art program to coincide with the 2021 Toronto Palestine Film Festival program.

"We are thrilled to partner with the Embassy Cultural House to include a visual arts online exhibition in the 2021 program of the festival. This will add a wonderful new dimension to our activities” said Dania Majid, programmer with the TPFF. 
 
Jamelie Hassan, 2001 Governor General Award Laureate for Visual and Media Arts and co-founder of the ECH said, “Celebrating Palestinian culture and supporting the work of Palestinian artists has been a longstanding commitment for many artists connected to the ECH community. It is with great pleasure that we look forward to future cultural projects with the TPFF.”  

Established in 1983, the Embassy Cultural House was a community-driven gallery and hosted interdisciplinary programs. It closed its physical doors in 1990. In 2020 the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and community website.

​The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization dedicated to bringing Palestinian cinema, music, cuisine and art to GTA audiences. TPFF was conceived in 2008 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Al-Nakba.

The TPFF launched its 14th year with a powerful and futuristic new design by Sama Al Zanoon. Sama is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Hamilton, Ontario. The design is an imagined journey to reclaim Palestinian destinies. This is a fictional space where Palestinians have limitless ability to explore their identity through film, art, and activism. 

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ECH family & community mourn the loss of Tyson Haller

3/23/2021

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The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) family and community are grieving the loss of Tyson Haller who passed away recently in Ottawa. He was a strong supporter and advocate of the ECH both during its original program at the Embassy Hotel between 1983 - 1990 and its present online format.

Tyson's parents Helen and Egon owned the Embassy Hotel from the late 1970s until it was sold in 2001. He was a huge part of the running of the hotel and organized the music program in the hotel bars. Tyson went on to study film at Ryerson University in Toronto. Our heart goes out to his family and all his friends in London, Toronto and Ottawa and around the world who are mourning his untimely death.
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Please visit Tyson's page to see some of his film work and photos.
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The Embassy Hotel
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I grew up here
Always chasing what's possible 
Ya I grew up here
With the old men
The ladies and escorts
The 1st Peoples
The bands
Social Distortion, DOA, No Means No, Rancid, SNFU, Face To Face
The Art
The Art exhibits 
The Embassy Cultural House
Remember
Polish your Eyes
Greg Curnoe, Tom Benner, Ron Benner, Eric Stach
They taught me to  hum a song
Till the feeling is gone
It burnt down
Now I look at the stars at night
Oh the modern world
You made my eyes red and raw
Lived through it 
To get to this moment
So I close my eyes
Click my heels 3 times
Embassy 
Home
You had to go 
I know I know
But if you look around
You just might feel the ghost
Floating around
Reminding us
That the winds are blowing 
And we can always choose what is possible than what we see...
 
Tyson Haller, August 2020

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South African newspaper covers ECH event to celebrate Lorraine Klaasen's FCLMA World Music Award

3/13/2021

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The South African newspaper, Sowetan Live, published an article on March 12 on JUNO Award-winner Lorrain Klaasen as part of its International Women's Day coverage. Lorraine, the daughter of the legendary South African performer Thandi Klaasen, remembered all the powerful women who contributed to making her the person she is today.  The article also reported on the sold-out Embassy Cultural House online event held on February 13, 2021  to celebrate Lorraine's 2020 Forest City London Music Award (FCLMA) in the category of World Music.  ECH Co-Founder, Jamelie Hassan, is quoted in the article as describing Lorraine as a strong advocate and powerful voice for women across the globe.  Lorraine recently joined the Advisory Circle of the  ECH to help promote education and awareness of African music, culture and heritage. Read the article online here.
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South African women singers from the 1950s.
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Lorraine with Lena Bulisa
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Lorraine with June Garber, a well known white South African Jazz singer based in Toronto.
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Last concert with Lorraine's mother Thandi Klaasen, paying tribute to her in South Africa 2016.
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Go; Rise and Strike... IWD Exhibit reviewed by novelist Marwan Hassan

3/10/2021

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​Congratulations on the Embassy Cultural House’s excellent show, which Jade Williamson coordinated and organized with Ruth Skinner and Charlotte Egan and brought together for International Women’s Day.

It is a modulated exhibition, reflecting a fine spectrum of works of art by the many artists who contributed to it. The exhibit is at once accessible and public while being insightful and reflective, intellectual and social. 

Sometimes there is objective intimacy; other times there is subjective revelation.

The presentation allows each artist to represent herself, while the sequence of the show flows smoothly and comes together as a collective work. The virtual images’ scale and portions of each work of art are well developed and presented with accompanying commentary and/or description by the artists.

It is good to scroll through the entire collection of pieces to observe the differences and complimentary relations of each artist’s work to one another, to feel the impact of the historical pieces, by many of the women artists such as Shelley Niro, Bernice Vincent, Freda Guttman, and Mireya Folch-Serra, who have made a significant contribution, relative to the new works by numerous younger artists, Niloufar Salimi, Julie René de Cotret and Soheila Esfahani. 

There’s texture to the works ranging from startling with elements of recognition and reversal in perception over to intimacy with a slow emergence of a revelation. 
 
Marwan Hassan, a novelist of Arab descent, was born in London, Ontario in 1950. He is a graduate of the University of Windsor. Marwan now lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
Click here to visit the International Women's Day Exhibit

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LIVE!  Go: Rise and Strike... International Women's Day Exhibit

3/7/2021

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Diana Tamblyn, Go; Rise and Strike, Tekahionwake, 2020
 The Embassy Cultural House's International Women’s Day Exhibition Go; Rise and Strike is NOW LIVE.  Coordinated by Jade Williamson with the assistance of Charlotte Egan and Ruth Skinner, the exhibit includes over twenty artists.  The exhibit includes artists who showed in the original International Women's Day exhibitions presented by the ECH in 1984 and 1985, as well as many more artists who are part of the ECH community today. 

They include: 
Jessie Amery, Amanda Boulos, Susan Day, Julie Rene De Cotret, Charlotte Egan, Soheila Esfahani, kerry ferris (1949 -2016), Mireya Folch Serra, Fatima Garzan, Anahi Gonzalez, Freda Guttman, Jamelie Hassan, Samar Hejazi, Fern Helfand, Sharmistha Kar, Suzy Lake, Catherine Morrisey, Shelley Niro, Thelma Rosner, Niloufar Salimi, Sandra Semchuk, Mackenzie Smith, Jean Spence, Diana Tamblyn, Zainub Verjee, Bernice Vincent (1934 - 2016), Jade Williamson, Michelle Wilson, and Winsom Winsom
 
Online Event: Sunday, March 14, 2021, at 1:30 pm, EST

Click here to register. 
Limited Capacity - Only 100 tickets available.

The beauty of this show is not only the art but the messages the artists have to share.  The value of this exhibition is that it lives on beyond International Women's Day, March 8, 2021. One day is not enough to celebrate the achievements of women and to recognize their challenges. Therefore, the infinite life in its virtual existence - makes this exhibition forever our toast and tribute to women everywhere

Jade Williamson, Exhibition Coordinator
March 7, 2021
Click here to visit the International Women's Day exhibit

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Award winning musician Lorraine Klaasen joins ECH Advisory Circle

3/6/2021

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Lorraine Klaasen joins ECH Advisory Circle
The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is pleased to announce that Lorraine Klaasen is joining our Advisory Circle. Lorraine is an internationally renown performer, a JUNO award-winner, and received in 2020 the Forest City London Music Award  (FCLMA) in the category of World Music. Originally from South Africa and formerly living in Montreal, Lorraine now lives in London, Ontario.

Lorraine has dedicated her career to uniting people of all races through music and art. Since immigrating to Canada about four decades ago, Lorraine has recorded and performed around the world. She has given memorable performances at the Montreal Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall. Her 2013 ‘Tribute to Miriam Makeba’ CD (Justin Time Records) earned her a JUNO Award. She participated in a documentary called the ‘Legends of Madiba’ that pays tribute to prominent South African female singers.

On February 13, 2021, the ECH hosted an online celebration in recognition of Lorraine's FCLMA World Music Award to a sold out crowd, and we are very excited to have Lorraine join our team bringing her energy and ideas to our ECH community.
 
Other members of the ECH Advisory Circle include: Samer Abdelnour, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho,  Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner and Lucas Stenning. 

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UK curator and writer Guy Brett dies at the age of 78

2/6/2021

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Guy Brett with Mona Hatoum in 2019 during a visit to her exhibit "Remains to Be Seen", White Cube Gallery, London, UK. Photo credit: Gerry Collins
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​The international arts community mourns the passing of UK curator and writer Guy Brett, who contributed important exhibitions and publications on key Latin American and Asian artists. Guy Brett died at the aged of 78. Among his many writings was the groundbreaking book Through Our Own Eyes: Popular Art and Modern History published in 1986. The book profiled art as overt political action with a focus on resistance to Chilean fascism, support for decolonization in Africa, and the nuclear weapons disarmament movement. All important themes that were also concerns of the ECH community's programming between 1983 and 1990. 

Jamelie Hassan met Guy Brett through Mona Hatoum during a visit to London, UK in 1989. After that meeting, Jamelie and Ron Benner began a correspondence with Guy that resulted in his visit to London, Ontario in the spring of 1992 where he presented a lecture at Western University's Visual Art Department. Guy's interest in indigenious cultural production in Canada aligned with Jamelie and Ron's commitments and after he read the publication Council  Fire by Tom Hill, he especially appreciated his meeting with Tom Hill and a visit to the Six Nations' Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario. At this time,  Jamelie and Ron worked with curator, Peter White, to organize for Guy a tour of other cultural centres in Canada, including  Banff, Alberta, Vancouver, BC, and Saskatoon, SK.


UK-based Palestinian artist, and long time friend  of ECH co-founders Ron Benner and Jamelie Hassan, Mona Hatoum shared this tribute to Guy. "It is very sad to say goodbye to the sensitive and insightful critic, curator and friend, Guy Brett who always championed artists outside the mainstream and focused on experimental and precarious forms from the margins, internationally and specially Latin American and Asian art. A very humble person who was never conscious of his own importance, he was nevertheless highly appreciated and has been referred to as ‘a hidden national treasure’. His quiet, graceful presence and unpretentious intelligence will be greatly missed."

Please read  recent obituaries on Guy Brett:
Constantly curious, uninterested in the market-led view': pioneering curator and writer Guy Brett has died, aged 78
  • Guy Brett, Influential Curator and Critic Who Expanded Art History, Has Died at 78

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​ GardenShip.ca is a Timely Project for a Just Recovery

1/30/2021

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Please visit GardenShip and State, 2019-2021, an exciting project that includes  as participants ECH co-founders, Ron Benner and Jamelie Hassan. This interdisciplinary research project is co-curated by award-winning artists/educators/activists, Patrick Mahon and Jeff Thomas.

An exhibition related to GardenShip research and workshops will be presented at Museum London and other locations throughout the city of London in September 2021. The contributors to this project address, in various contexts and formats, urgent issues related to the climate crisis and decolonization as intertwined. 
 
Please visit the GardenShip website for more details and information on other participating artists and contributors. 

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S F Ho joins ECH Advisory Circle

1/29/2021

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S F Ho joins ECH Advisory Circle
We are ​pleased to welcome S F Ho to the Embassy Cultural House Advisory Circle. S F Ho, based in Vancouver, British Colombia, has a long history with London, Ontario's cultural and activist community.  Please visit S F Ho's page  and visit their contribution to the ECH's inaugural online exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight.
 
S F Ho is currently working with the ECH on coordinating an upcoming project on Hong  Kong. We look forward  to this upcoming project and other future initiatives. Other members of the Advisory Circle include: Samer Abdelnour, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand,  Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner and Lucas Stenning. 

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EDITORIAL TEAM

ONLINE FOUNDER
Tariq Hassan Gordon

COFOUNDERS & CURATORIAL ADVISORS 
 
Jamelie Hassan 
& Ron Benner

ADVISORY CIRCLE
Samer Abdelnour, Marnie Fleming, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho, Lorraine Klaasen, Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner, Mary Lou and Dan Smoke,  and Lucas Stenning 

COORDINATING EDITORS
Tariq Hassan Gordon & 
Olivia Mossuto

WEB DESIGN & SOCIAL MEDIA 
Tariq Hassan Gordon, Ira Kazi, Olivia Mossuto, Niloufar Salimi,  JoAnna Weil 

VIRTUAL TOUR
Andreas Buchwaldt

PRINT PUBLICATIONS
Blessy Augustine, Shelley Kopp, 
Olivia Mossuto

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Andreas Buchwaldt, Blessy Augustine, Anahí González, Ira Kazi, ​Shelley Kopp, Ashar Mobeen, Niloufar Salimi,  Jenna Rose Sands, JoAnna Weil & Michelle Wilson. 

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OUR STORY
Artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner and jazz musician Eric Stach founded the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990) located in the restaurant portion of the Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas Street in East London. Other former members of the board were: Debrann Eastabrook, Henry Eastabrook, Sharron Forrest, Wyn Geleynse, Janice Gurney, Jean Hay (1929 - 2008), Doug Mitchell, Kim Moodie, Gerard Pas, Peter Rist, Wanda Sawicki, Jean Spence and Jennie White. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and website. 

This project is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the London Arts Council through the City of London's Community Arts Investment Program.
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Thank you to our partners

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E M B A S S Y  C U L T U R A L  H O U S E . C A

​London, Ontario is on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum and other treaties.

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