Alana Bartol biography

Alana Bartol comes from a long line of water witches. Her site-responsive works 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, Bartol holds a B.F.A. honours with distinction from the University of Windsor and an M.F.A. from Detroit’s Wayne State University. In 2019 and 2021, she was long-listed for Canada's prestigious Sobey Art Award. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and festivals nationally and internationally including Berlin Feminist Film Festival, Brussels Experimental Film Festival, SIMULTAN festival (Romania), Museo de la Ciudad de Guadalajara (Mexico), Karsh-Masson Gallery (Ottawa), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), PlugIn ICA (Winnipeg), University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, and Access Gallery (Vancouver), amongst others. She has been an artist-in-residence with Eastern Edge Gallery, Santa Fe Art Institute, Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, and the Canadian Forces Artist Program (Latvia). Her artwork is in the collections of Art Gallery of Alberta, the City of Calgary Public Art Program, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, RBC Art Collection, and private collections.

Of Scottish, German, English, French, Irish, and Danish ancestry, Bartol is a white settler Canadian currently living in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Alberta where she is a sessional instructor at Alberta University of the Arts.