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"Hearing Voices", Connie Michele Morey and Soleia Izmer-Morey; mother-daughter performance with sculptures "Uproot" & "Resourced"; Lekwungen Territories (Vic West, BC); October 31, 2021
Hearing Voices is a studio research project focusing on performance with sculpture to embody the people, places and species displaced by current primary resource industry practices, while questioning how the earth could heal itself if we could learn how to harvest sustainably.  Photographs documenting over fifty past village and industry sites on the east and west coasts of Canada form the base of portable sculptures that are activated by the body through labour-performances (performances engaging basic acts of labour by walking, carrying, pushing, pulling, lifting) to reflect on how we might revision current labour practices with relational integrity while looking to the earth as teacher. 

The prototype for Hearing Voices was developed with the support of Gillian Booth, the University of Victoria Legacy Gallery, artist/mentor Barb Hunt and with technical support by David Holloway.  The research is indebted to the research and writing of Vandana Shiva and Anishinaabe biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer. The project is funded with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts. 
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"Pack", Portable/wearable sculpture (backpack) constructed of photographs of displaced village and industry sites; February 2021
We respectfully acknowledge the Indigenous Communities and Nations in whose territories we live and work.  Peoples whose historical relationships with the land and influence on languages, and cultures continue to this day: the Xwspesum (Esquimalt) and Lkwungen (Songhees), WSANEC (Malahat, Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum), Quw'utsun (Cowichan), K'ómoks, Kwakwakw'akw and Ligwiłda’xw Nations.
Connie Michele Morey's studio practice explores the experience of home as ecological interdependence. Through site-specific performance, and participatory sculptures documented through photography and video, her work questions the relationships between ecology, displacement and belonging. Connie's studio practice is influenced by childhood experiences living rurally off the land, while being surrounded by family traditions of masonry, construction and textiles. Her family history interweaves settler and Indigenous identities (Scottish, Scandinavian and Anishinaabe), and her studies in sculpture, ecology, philosophy and decolonial studies have impacted her interest in the politics of displacement. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Lethbridge, an M.Ed. in Art Education and a Studio-Based PhD from the University of Victoria. She currently lives as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the Xwsepsum (Esquimalt) and Lkwungen (Songhees) Peoples where she also teaches Drawing, Sculpture, and Community Art at the University of Victoria and Camosun College.
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts