Episode 10: Laiwan on Jin-me Yoon, Listening to Pictures, SFU Galleries

Episode 10 | August 18
Laiwan on Jin-me Yoon

“We each in turn return to 2021 from 1991
listening to these mountains
listening to this lake…”

Jin-me Yoon has been a critical voice in the development of discussions around identity within visual art for three decades, and has taught as faculty in SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts since 1992. Following Yoon's own description of her artistic strategy as "semiotic collisions” — a means of extracting something from one context and placing it in another to ignite a proliferation of meanings — Laiwan composes their own "semiotic collision" in the form of a three-part score, meditating on Yoon's Souvenirs of the Self (Postcard Series) (1991). Laiwan works to leave the space of representation open, citing American Vietnamese philosopher and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, as a commitment to not speaking on their subject's behalf or in their place.

Visit: Listening to Pictures Episode 10

Listening to Pictures: Artists on the SFU Art Collection

June 16 – August 18, 2022
Radio and mail program

Lucien Durey on Allyson Clay / Christian Vistan and Kiel Torres on Roy Kiyooka / Brady Cranfield and Kathy Slade on Bridge Beardslee / Carol Sawyer and Laurance Playford-Beaudet on May Wilson / Ken Lum on Corita Kent / Marian Penner Bancroft and Patrik Andersson on Christos Dikeakos / COSINIYE Paul and Sage Paul on Susan Point / Fabiola Carranza and Michelle Helene Mackenzie on Althea Thauberger / Kara Ditte Hansen and Steffanie Ling on Ken Lum / Laiwan on Jin-me Yoon 

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The SFU Art Collection consists of over 5,800 modern and contemporary paintings, photographs, sculptures, works on paper, and large public installations. The Collection’s holdings were established soon after the University’s founding in 1965 and they continue to grow. The Collection is unique in its capacity to trace the complex social and cultural life connected to this region, and remains open to new inquiries and stories as they surface.

Listening to Pictures: Artists on the SFU Art Collection is a 10-episode radio program featuring voices of artists with lived experience on the West Coast.

For more information visit: SFU Galleries Listening to Pictures

Special thanks to Kimberly Phillips and Karina Irvine.

C Magazine Review by Olivia Michiko Gagnon

Thanks to Olivia Michiko Gagnon and C Magazine for this lovely review.

https://cmagazine.com/issues/151/traces-erasures-resists-laiwan

Panel Discussion: Erasures – Cultural Activism and Periodicals

Thursday, 31 Mar 2022 from 12-1:30 pm — Virtual Event

The online panel Erasures: Cultural Activism and Periodicals is presented in partnership with Western Front on the occasion of the Belkin exhibition Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists. In addition to artistic projects, this exhibition highlights Laiwan’s significant work as a cultural activist since the early 1980s. These activities have included her contribution to queer, feminist, multicultural and visual art print publications, notably Angles (1983-1998) published by the Vancouver Gay Community Centre Society, and Kinesis (1971-2001) published by the Vancouver Status of Women. Neither remains in print. In 1991 Laiwan also helped initiate Zimbabwean Women in Contemporary Culture Trust (ZWICCT) in Harare to celebrate women cultural workers.

Moderated by Laiwan, Erasures: Cultural Activism and Periodicals invites her former collaborators Frederick Thomas Edwards, John Kozachenko and Joyce Jenje Makwenda to reflect on their experience as activists and contributors to these periodicals in the 1980s and 90s. In particular, what was the space of consciousness, commons and collaboration that fostered these publishing activities? What were the economic and cultural circumstances that propelled them into the work that they were doing, and the work that they continue to do today? This conversation looks to the pathways forged by activists who were drawn to the periodical as a space of consciousness, and who have fought against the erasure of experience from dominant discourse.

Register for the panel discussion.  

BIG Thanks to Tatiana Mellema for attentive reserach and coordination of the program, the Belkin and the Western Front, Susan Gibb, Ben Wilson, Jay Pahr and Josephine Wong for exceptional background help and tech.

Visit HERE for more information.

Traces & Intervals

Traces and Intervals featured films by artists Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Midi Onodera. Like Laiwan, in the early 1980s these artists worked in conceptual and formal processes that sought to intervene in stereotypical expectations of identity through a destabilization of language, and a deconstruction of cinematic form.

In 1993, Laiwan would write in Angles magazine: “In our struggles against oppression and racism it is important to look at Trinh’s strategies in her filmmaking and writings to find models she was working towards, and the models she is working from, so that we can move on in our own work in culture and identity.” Traces and Intervals takes Trinh’s notion of the cinema interval as its starting point, the possibilities of a pause from one space to another that constitutes an interruption and irruption. It is at this intermission, distance, lapse or gap between states that the threshold of representation and communication appears. Each film in the series breaks with representation and identity as a fixed truth, offering instead a critique of the documentary desire through what Trinh calls an “unsutured process of meaning production.”

PROGRAM

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, White Dust From Mongolia (USA/South Korea 1980, 30 min.)

Trinh T. Minh-ha, REASSEMBLAGE (USA/Senegal 1982, 40 min.)

Intermission (15 min.) 

Midi Onodera, The Displaced View (Canada 1988, 50 min.)

Last Day for HWR Transit Shelters

What a great run! There is only one day left to visit the ten transit shelters for How Water Remembers! The transit posters will change on March 14.

You can send your transit shelter pix to sealevelrise@vancouver.ca, subject: How Water Remembers, before March 20, 2022 and be entered to win prizes of a foodie gift certificate and the complete deck of HWR cards.

How Water Remembers participatory options:

1) Ten Guardian Creatures that did live or could live in False Creek have been placed in ten bus shelters across the city for citizens to find and “collect”. Go to https://www.laiwanette.net/#/how-water-remembers/ to see the ten bus shelter locations.

2) You can also collect the Guardian Creatures by visiting 20 participating shops in Chinatown. Visit these shops and to collect the cards. You can make a number of visits to Chinatown to collect them! Go to https://www.laiwanette.net/#/how-water-remembers/ for the list of 20 shops and the Google Map link.

Through these activities, How Water Remembers aims to build awareness and cultural value in developing sustainable ecologies for humans and biodiversity. By increasing ecological biodiversity, scientists believe we can slow down global warming and also increase protections against future pandemics. How Water Remembers will also encourage a vision of a more livable city with sensitive landscape architecture that enhances biodiversity, while respecting our interconnected livelihood with the many diverse critters whose habitats may be currently endangered.

Belkin Reception & TCR Launch March 19, 2022

Dear Friends, You are invited to the reception of “Traces, Erasures, Resists” at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery on March 19, 2022 from 2-4pm. https://belkin.ubc.ca/events/reception-and-launch-laiwan-and-tcr/

This happy occasion also launches the latest issue of The Capilano Review — celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022 with the publication of a three-part glossary — and Issue 3.46 (Spring 2022): A-H; where my white out painting “AGILE” is included.

Thanks to the Belkin and the Capilano Review for long-standing community support and encouragement.

At the Belkin Gallery — January 7 - April 10, 2022

It is a pleasure and privilege to be working with the excellent folks at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery on an upcoming solo exhibition.

I am without words in how to express my gratitude to everyone at the Belkin, and especially to guest curator Amy Kazymerchyk who has been incredibly supportive, enthusiastic and deeply attentive. As well, I am with great appreciation for the support and encouragement of Scott Watson, Lorna Brown, Barbara Cole, Annette Wooff, Jana Tyner, Owen Sopotiuk, Michael R. Barrick, Teresa Sudeyko, Naomi Sawada, Karen Zalamea, David Steele, Jessica Fletcher, Tatiana Mellema, Jay Pahre, Eileen Wu, and everyone involved in this exhibition.

I am humbled and deeply moved by this all. Thank you Belkin Gallery.

Please come celebrate the hard work of these excellent folk at the reception. More details to come.

https://belkin.ubc.ca/exhibitions/laiwan-traces-erasures-resists/

Massy Arts Interviews Laiwan

Dec 21st – Feb 1st, Massy Arts will host a new window installation by Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator Laiwan.

In Phase 1 of “How Water Remembers”, the artist collaborates with Karlene Harvey, Yao Xiao, T’uy’tanat-Cease Wyss, Angela Danyluk, and Sean Cao in a project that explores the path of water and future rising sea levels, with a relation to cultural stories, and includes a socially engaged, site specific exploration through 2022 in Vancouver’s Chinatown, to build imagination and consciousness for a return of possible False Creek mudflat inhabitants to find home among us.

In the gallery’s window, Laiwan presents 4 large posters that introduce viewers to the exploratory piece.

To celebrate the artist’s piece at the gallery’s window, and understand more about the extension of the project, Community Engagement Coordinator Rafael Zen interviews Laiwan for Massy Arts, questioning art made on the borders of history, biology, and politics. Click HERE for the interview https://massyarts.com/event/massy-interviews-laiwan/

The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver and is open Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm. Click HERE to know more about the exhibition

PANDEMIA — THE MOVIE

The Libby Leshgold Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of Laiwan’s new video work PANDEMIA — The Movie, as part of the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program for ECU‘s Urban Screen.

Aug 30, 2021, 8:00AM – Feb 28, 2022, 9:00PM

On Campus, Urban Screen, Wilson Arts Plaza, Emily Carr University
520 East 1st Ave Vancouver BC V5T 0H2 See on Map

CONTACT Libby Leshgold Gallery | libby@ecuad.ca

FREE — OPEN TO PUBLIC

For More Info: Libby Leshgold Gallery

PANDEMIA — The Movie

2021 Emily Award - Attending to Small Marvels

Gratitude to Emily Carr University for awarding me the 2021 Emily Award and to Madeline Barber for this lovely interview: Attending to Small Marvels. I am humbled and with great appreciation for this honour.

Discovering the Syntax of Sensuality: A Review of Laiwan’s “TENDER”

Many thanks PRISM International and Clayton Longstaff for the thoughtful and generous review. And always, gratitude to Talonbooks!

http://prismmagazine.ca/2021/04/01/discovering-the-syntax-of-sensuality-a-review-of-laiwans-tender/

Emily Award Recipient 2021

Emily Carr University of Art + Design is pleased to announce 2021 Honorary Doctorates will be bestowed upon educator, scholar and writer Eve Tuck; and director, writer and producer Nettie Wild.

This year’s Emily Award will be presented to cultural activist, interdisciplinary artist, writer, poet and educator Laiwan, a 1983 alumna.

“It is our great honour to recognize the accomplishments of these three brilliant scholars, writers, educators and creative professionals,” Gillian Siddall, President + Vice-Chancellor of Emily Carr University, says. “Each has made an indelible mark on the ECU community, as well as on their professional and creative communities more broadly. Their contributions to the projects of social and environmental justice, decolonization, community empowerment, and redefining equity and inclusivity through intellectual and artistic inquiry demonstrate originality, dedication and conscience of the highest order.”

All three will receive their honours during ECU’s virtual 2021 Convocation ceremony on May 14, 2021.

Read more HERE

Nettie Wild, Laiwan (photo by John Fukushima) and Eve Tuck. Images courtesy of the artists.

Podcast Conversation with Amy, Melinda and me

To accompany the exhibition Thought, outside curator Amy Kazymerchyk recorded conversations with the artists Craig Berggold, Laiwan, Melinda Mollineaux and Susan Stewart.

Podcast # 1

Laiwan and Melinda Mollineaux discuss the historical context and conditions within which their respective artworks African Notes Part 1 & 2 (1982) and Cadboro Bay: Index to an Incomplete History (1998) were made; and the formal and technical restoration that was required to present these works in 2020. They reflect upon how the notion of cyclical dialectics resonates with the endurance of these artworks and their formal and conceptual qualities, as well as the artists’ personal histories, artistic practices and social commitments.

You can find the podcasts here.

Interview with Sheryl MacKay CBC Radio

Here’s a link for yesterday’s interview/reading on CBCs North by Northwest with fabulous host Sheryl MacKay:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-43-north-by-northwest/clip/15814005-sunday-december-13

I start at 54:20 minutes (after the choir). Thanks Sheryl MacKay, CBC Radio North by Northwest, and Talonbooks

On this episode you'll hear from Greg Joy about playing the hammered dulcimer, from Laiwan about her book of poems, from baker Haley Landa and from Suzie LeBlanc singer and new artistic director with Early Music Vancouver.

International audiences can access the recording through the CBC Listen Mobile App

TENDER Reviewed in Rungh Magazine

Gratitude to Rebecca Peng and Rungh Magazine for the generous and attentive review in the latest issue:
https://rungh.org/a-return-of-a-new-medea/

"Thought, outside" group exhibition at the Western Front

Thought, outside

Nov 12 – Dec 19, 2020

Curated by Amy Kazymerchyk, Thought, outside is composed with an eye to how each artwork thinks the phenomenon of the outside. This concept is variably expressed as the condition of being out-of-doors, beyond a geographic delineation, without legal recognition or unfamiliar with social custom. It is a position that is sometimes articulated in the negative: by that which is not inside. However, the boundary between the inside and outside is rarely fixed or exclusive. Rather, it is relational, durational and transitory.

The exhibition presents lens based artworks by Craig Berggold, Marlene Creates, Kiss & Tell, Roy Kiyooka, Laiwan, Ken Lum and Melinda Mollineaux produced between the 1970s and 90s. The works engage then-emerging frameworks of multiplicity, plurality and decentering that make the contingent nature of the outside visible. Their anachronistic encounter draws attention to how artworks continue to think across the conditions of presentation.

https://front.bc.ca/events/thought-outside/

Special thanks to Amy Kazymerchyk, Brady Marks, Ben Wilson, Pablo de Ocampo, and all at the Western Front .

Postscript 75: Arboreal Allies

Much gratitude to Caitlin Main, summer intern for Artspeak Gallery, for Postscript number 75 on my project Maple Tree Spiral now online, big thanks for the lovely attentive and literary text!

Appreciations also to Bopha Chhay, Erik Hood, and all at Artspeak for the wonderful support. And to the participating artists / speakers Cease Wyss, Anne Riley, Egan Davis, Daniel Negatu, Sepideh Saii, Melissa West Morrison, the Environmental Youth Alliance, the City of Vancouver arborists, and the many who contributed in the research and process of Maple Tree Spiral: the pedagogy of a tree in the city.

PDF Download here: Arboreal Allies

Talonbooks 2020 Full Catalogue

Appreciations to Talonbooks for selecting this image for the cover of their 2020 Full Catalogue. There's amazing upcoming titles including the story of Dukesang Wong, on the music of thinking by Fred Wah, new poems from Colin Browne and many other works of prose, poetry non-fiction, plays!

Support local publishing and writers. You can download the Full Catalogue and the 2019 Indigenous Catalogue from: https://talonbooks.com/

Image from my project "she who had scanned the flower of the world...", (1987 and ongoing); this series: 20"x30" giclee prints, 2017.

Join us at the MFAIA, Goddard College

Come join our MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts community at Goddard College!

For more information, visit https://www.ida-mfaia.net

Note in Canadian Art

Thanks to Henry Heng Lu for this timely article, for reaching out to me, and to fellow colleagues doing the work, supporting Asian Canadian and Chinese communities across Canada, to counter increased anti-Asian racism during this pandemic.

Part 1 of the article is here.

And you can find Part 2 of the article here.

My gratitude and respect to Youth Collaborative for Chinatown - 青心在唐人街, 世代同行會, Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, the hua foundation, the Chinatown Concern Group 唐人街關注組, and many other local grassroots organizations doing excellent work supporting and organizing in the Vancouver Chinatown community. And thanks Canadian Art.