Canada’s Self Portrait Contemporary Art Exhibit

June 28 to July 11, 2016

A young man and woman wearing red tee shirts are happy as they look at lots of papers spread out on a table. The other side shows artwork on the wall.

Winner of the 2016 Applied Arts Conceptual Illustration award, Canada’s Self Portrait is a participatory art project about who we are and what we stand for as Canadians. For three weeks during the summer of 2014, artist Aquil Virani and cofounder Rebecca Jones took a coast-to-coast trip from St. John’s through Halifax all the way to Victoria, asking members of the Canadian public to fill out a one-page worksheet that included an opportunity to sketch what it means to be Canadian. With over 800 submissions from across the country, these doodles were re-drawn and integrated into a single “truly Canadian’’ artwork.