EMBASSY CULTURAL HOUSE
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Sandra Semchuk

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Sandra Semchuk

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Fishing, Murray Lake, Sask., 2020

“I offered your family frozen pickerel. You stared at me for a long time and said that you were going to set the nets for your family. Sports fishing made no sense when you were dependent on the fish for survival.”
Sandra Semchuk asks herself the question: What leads toward deeper recognitions across generations, cultures, and species? A photographer and scholar, Semchuk is a second-generation Ukrainian Canadian. In 2018, Sandra received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Over the decades, she has focused her photographic and video works on relationships between herself, her family, and her community. She collaborated with her late husband, James Nicholas, Rock Cree writer and orator, on photographic, text, and video works to disrupt myths that have shaped settler relations to First Nations. Ithin-eh-wuk—We Place Ourselves at the Centre: James Nicholas and Sandra Semchuk was a collaborative exhibition at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Saskatoon opened in 2021. ​Recent photographic and video works engage the wider-than-human, the forest, and the overtone singing of Jerry DesVoignes to provide a larger context for human narratives. Her artist’s book,The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps (University of Alberta Press, 2018), creates a space for internees and descendants to tell their stories. For more information on Sandra's work, please visit The National Gallery of Canada website or Rungh Magazine. 

Memories of the ECH:

“The time I spent in London, Ontario (1981–83, 1984–87), was so important to my development as an artist. The artists' community there and the vital activities at the Embassy Cultural House were extraordinary. There was a freedom in the air: the forms, including performance art, installation art, and interdisciplinary work. The depth, activism, and criticality of works produced and projects engaged set the bar high for the work and collaborations that I have undertaken since. The ideas by artists such as Bernice Vincent, Coco Gordon, Jamelie Hassan, and Ron Benner, and curators Marnie Fleming and Bob McKaskell, to name a few, were a great privilege to engage with. As I look back, I see how amazing the community and the dialogue between us were, and I am grateful to have experienced such generosity in the community. We were profoundly interested in one another's work, learning from each other, taking risks because of the courage shown by others."


Works by Sandra Semchuk

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James Nicholas and Sandra Semchuk collaboration “Taking Off Skins,” Vancouver, BC, 1994
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James Nicholas and Sandra Semchuk collaboration “Stolen Strength,” Southern Alberta, 2007
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“Mute/Voice,” self-portraits, including video, RR6, Saskatoon, Sask., 1976–91


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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  • Home
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    • Past Programming >
      • Exhibitions 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Curators
        • Index of Photographers
        • Index of Visual Artists
      • Film 1983-1990
      • Music 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Musicians
      • Performances 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Performers
    • Embassy Hotel History
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