Photo by: Rachel Topham Photography

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. At the centre of her practice is a question often posed by her grandmother: “You feel me?” This question is both a declaration of one’s personal orientation, and an invitation to reorient and include what is held in our flesh. Her research attends to individual and collective embodied archives, social choreographies of the everyday, and choreography and dance as otherwise ways of being in relation.

Chambers holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and is currently Assistant Professor in the Dance Area at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and Associate Artist to The Dance Centre. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

Her recent choreographic projects include: The Brutal Joy, Zephyrs, Heirloom, Archives and Heirlooms, Steady, And then this also, One hundred more, tailfeather, for all of us, it could have been like this, ten thousand times and one hundred more,  Family Dinner, Family Dinner: The Lexicon, Semi-precious: the faceting of a gemstone only appears complete and critical; Enters and Exits and COPY.

Chambers’ work has been hosted at: Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto Biennial of Art, EMPAC, Libby Leshgold Gallery at ECUAD, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Sophiensaele (Berlin), Burrard Arts Foundation, National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Nanaimo Art Gallery, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Mile Zero Dance Society, Festival of New Dance, Agora de la danse, Canada Dance Festival, Dance in Vancouver, Dance Saskatchewan, Dancing on the Edge Festival, New Dance Horizons, The Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery and the Western Front.

Chambers is a founding member of project bk, was artist in residence at artist run centre 221A (2017), a selected artist for the  Visiting Dance Artist Program at the National Arts Centre (2019-2020), one of three choreographer’s in the Yulanda Faris Choreographer’s Program (2017-2018), and associate artist and artist in residence to The Dance Centre (2024-2027).

Justine has collaborated on projects with:

Digital video artist Josh Hite: COPY: a movement based installation, Incoming, Green Boot Print (The Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Code Lab and 350.org), Choreography Walk (2015: Vancouver, 2019: Hong Kong, 2019: Vancouver).

Visual Artist, Elly Reitman: See where you are

Dance Artist, Simran Sachar: Today is the evening to strike lightning / Aaj To Bijiliyan Girane Ki Shaam Hai

Choreographer and dancer Laurie Young: One hundred more

Visual artist Natalie Purschwitz and sound artist Anju Singh: Co-facilitation of Trackings and Trappings – Summer Institute at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art

Sound artist Elisa Ferrari: EMF Movement Studies & invisible director

Visual artist Mike Bourscheid: Idealverein

Dance Artist Alexa Solveig Mardon and scholar Peter Dickinson: Our Present Dance Histories

Visual artist Evann Siebens:  Homemade Again.

Dance artist Claudia Fancello: Light Was The Night: Night Shifting.

Musician Ben Brown:  We’re Making a Band

Visual Artist Brendan Fernandes: The Working Move (The Western Front, The Stedelijk Museum)

Contemporary Gamelan Composer Michael Tenzer: Sphinx (Tour of Bali 2013)

Visual artist Jen Weih: Stack of Moves (Wrong Waves Festival 2013)

Visual artists Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy: Is there anything at all left to do be done at all (Trinity Square Video)

Dance artist Deanna Peters: One + the Other (The Cultch and New Dance Horizons)

Chambers, Sadira Rodrigues and battery opera’s Su Feh Lee co-facilitate the monthly forum The Talking Thinking Dancing Body; a conversation about aesthetics, context and artistic processes.

As a dancer, she has worked with a number of choreographers both nationally and abroad. Including: Kate Franklin, ame henderson, sasha ivanochko, battery opera, adelheid dance projects, Company 605, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Oded Graf and Yossi Berg, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance.