The 2025/2026 VASD Program Series

Context fundamentally influences the understanding and interpretation of an artwork, both for the creator and the audience. Because people, places, times, cultures, and sociopolitical circumstances change, context is not singular or static. Artists and their work are shaped, exist, and are understood in flux.

This continual shift and resulting reexamination prompt a number of questions, including: What are the impacts of engaging an artwork out of its intended context? What does it mean to revisit art from a new context? How do artists recontextualize their work and how does that influence their practice? Who determines contextual framing and to what extent?

Through lectures, exhibitions, presentations, and events, RMCAD’s 2025/2026 Recontextualize Series will ask these questions across four major programs: the VASD Program, the Annual Student Symposium, the Philip J. Steele Gallery, and the Fashion Showcase.

More RECONTEXTUALIZE Series artists will be announced soon.