Canadian artist Alana Bartol comes from a long line of water witches. Her site-responsive artworks explore divination as a way of understanding across places, species, and bodies. Through collaborative and individual works, she creates relationships between the personal sphere and the landscape, particular to this time of ecological crisis.

A multidisciplinary artist with a B.F.A. from the University of Windsor (Canada) and an M.F.A. from Wayne State University (USA), she has been a visitor to Mohkinstsis (Calgary), Alberta in Treaty 7 Territory for five years. In 2019, she was longlisted for Canada’s Sobey Art Award representing the Prairies and North. Bartol’s work has been presented in festivals and galleries nationally and internationally including Esker Foundation Project Space, PlugIn ICA, Latitude 53, Walter Phillips Gallery, Berlin Feminist Film Festival, Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, Brussels Independent Film Festival, Istanbul Experimental Film Festival, and Media City International Film and Video Festival, amongst others. Bartol currently teaches at Alberta University of the Arts.

For more research on this work visit Orphan Well Adoption Agency. Follow her residency with University of Lethbridge Art Gallery. Her upcoming 2-person exhibition at Viviane Art Gallery with Sandra Meigs in July-August 2020.

Alana Bartol, “Orphan Well Adoption Agency”, at Latitude 53 December 7 2018–January 26 2019. Photo by Adam Waldron-Blain.

Orphan Well Adoption Agency Promotion, 2017-ongoing. Postcards, signs, online advertising, various dimensions.