Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP) 2018-2019
I participated in the Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP) 2018-2019 through the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa, ON. In December 2018 I was embedded with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in Ukraine on Operation UNIFIER. This operation is a CAF mission to support the Security Forces of Ukraine. The operation’s focus is to assist with security force training to help them improve and build their capability and capacity.
My initial goal was to examine the overlapping military cultures and assess how the history of war and architecture of war in the region impact the missions operational mandate. Based on the visual explorations and research conducted on site, I developed a body of work that consists of mostly photography and video. This work will be exhibited at the CWM with the CFAP 2018-2019 Group Show, tentatively scheduled for December 2023.
Following the embed, I travelled independently of the CAF across Ukraine where I interviewed politicians, diplomats, NGO's, journalists, and civilians to get a broader understanding of the current situation in Ukraine and the war in the East. My interest in Ukraine and the development of this work and my research is ongoing.
The work I have developed for CFAP will not be up on my website until the exhibition is over in 2023. For a little debrief of my experience, I wrote a blog post when I first returned home:
If you have any questions about this work, please contact me.

A cold morning at the Yavoriv Training Base: the CAF oversees the Ukrainian soldiers preparing
for their final offensive during their week-long training exercise.

Tank Range Observation Post in the Yavoriv Training Base, Ukraine, 2018.