Haruko Okano is a 3rd generation Japanese-Canadian born in Toronto, Ontario and currently living in Vancouver, BC. She was raised through the Toronto-based Children’s Aid Society, aging out of care at 18 years old. She is involved in environmental activism and human rights particularly focused on Indigenous, Black, and people of colour antiracism.
As an interdisciplinary artist, her practice is process-based, integrating her priorities of deep community engagement/peer collaborations, ecological sustainability, and decolonization methodologies. Her artistic intent is focused more on the creative process as a catalyst for change versus singular authorship or physical end product.
Programs
Haruko Okano: Six Chairs in a Circle
Location: 259 Lake Shore Blvd East
In Six Chairs in a Circle, artist Haruko Okano invites Ayumi Goto, Cheryl Trudeau, Elwood Jimmy, and Peter Morin to explore ideas of collectivity based on desire, love, relation-building, empathy, collaboration, and generosity. Learning from human and non-human living networks and systems, each practitioner shares knowledge, experience, and methods of gathering through differences and conflicted narratives deriving from the complexities of…