An excerpt from my new book TENDER

TalonBooks has an excerpt from my new book of collected poems online for your enjoyment.

You can also order TENDER online. The process of working on this manuscript with editors, designers and all the staff at TalonBooks has been a transformative experience. I am deeply grateful for Talon’s professional guidance and encouragement!

Support local authors and local publishing, visit TalonBooks’ Latest Catalogue for 2020!

Talonbooks' Spring 2020 Launch: Postponed

The Spring 2020 launch, which was to take place on April 2 at Pyatt Hall in Vancouver, featuring Cecily Nicholson hosting, and Arleen Paré, Gladys Hindmarch, Margaret Christakos, Laiwan, and Mercedes Eng reading from their new books, has been postponed. TalonBooks will be rescheduling. Stay posted for updates!

Barnacle City Revisits April 13 – May 10, 2020

Appreciations to Tamara Tosoff and the City of Vancouver Public Art Programs for reprogramming past twelve videos commissioned for the outdoor screens at the NE corner of Robson and Granville Streets. A different video will screen every month from February 17 until the end of 2020, or until the upgrade and replacement of the Robson and Granville video screens occurs.

My contribution to the Coastal City Platform series "Barnacle City" is scheduled to screen from April 13 – May 10, 2020. For more information, visit Year Long Exhibition of Digital Public Art

TENDER published by TalonBooks

Much gratitude and enormous respect for these wonderful folks at Talonbooks - with Vicky Williams, Charles Simard (editor), Catriona Strang (editor) and the exceptional Mocha (the Talon pup) - and behind the scenes with Spencer Williams, Kevin Williams, andrea bennett (book design), and Leslie Smith (cover design). And in the presence of the vibrant bill bissett paintings!

I am honoured and feel loved by the depth of attention and understanding during the process of editing and preparing TENDER.

Blessings in thanks and appreciations @talonbooks
https://talonbooks.com/books/tender

SFU Artist-in-Residence and Public Art Commission

Read full story here: SFU Artist-in-Residence and Public Art Commission

Invite to WANDER

Here is an announcement card for my 22nd Street Skytrain / Bus Exchange Public Art Project, commissioned by TransLink, Metro Vancouver's transportation network, and the City of New Westminster.

Please share if you like. Thanks!
Photo by Daniel Negatu.

SFU Global Asia Launch

Presented by the Simon Fraser University Global Asia Program

I will be speaking at Global Asia: BC Perspectives with six other presenters, approximately five minutes each, PechaKucha style. More info and to register here: EVENTBRITE.

What is Global Asia? As globalization enters the Asian Century how does the circulation of people, ideas, money, and products impact us in Vancouver and beyond? How do our connections to Asia inform our world and our work? In a series of short lectures local speakers with extraordinary perspectives will share their thoughts on these questions, the meaning of "Global Asia" and how Asia informs their world and their work.

Join us at this exciting evening event as we celebrate the launch of Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences new Global Asia Program. Catered reception to follow.

Thursday, November 7, 6:30PM

SFU Vancouver - Segal Graduate School of Business, Room SB 1200

500 Granville Street (@ W. Pender St.)

This event is free and open to the public. Maybe see you there!

Upcoming 'In The Present Moment' Conference, Victoria

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in partnership with the University of Victoria presents:

In the Present Moment: Buddhism, Contemporary Art and Social Practice
A Research Convening

October 25 to 27, 2019, Victoria, BC.
Location: University of Victoria
For more information, visit In the Present Moment website

This research convening brings together professional artists, practicing Buddhists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to better understand Buddhist influences in contemporary art in North America. Resisting orientalized notions of Buddhism as a timeless, unchanging, passive tradition, this convening explores how diverse artists have drawn on Buddhist ideas and practices as a “methodology” of art practice, shifting the focus of inquiry from the art object to processes of artistic creation.

Maple Tree Spiral at Artspeak Gallery

“Maple Tree Spiral: the pedagogy of a tree in the city”

LAIWAN

June 14–July 27, 2019
Reception Saturday July 6, 4pm

Laiwan will be in studio on Tuesdays and Saturdays, 2–4pm

With Egan Davis, Anne Riley, T’uy’t’tanat Ceass Wyss, Melissa West Morrison and Marika van Reeuwyk of the Environmental Youth Alliance, Sepideh Saii, Daniel Negatu, and brothers Frank and Dance Williams.

Situated a short distance from Artspeak at the corner junction of Carrall, Water, Alexander and Powell Streets was formerly the site of Maple Tree Square. Laiwan takes the historic site of the Square as a starting point for her research project Maple Tree Spiral: the pedagogy of a tree in the city. The original Maple Tree no longer stands, and instead a statue of ‘Gassy’ Jack Deighton. As a site where one of the first city council meetings of the settlement of Gastown was held, Laiwan considers how Maple Tree Square is a space of convergence.

Continue reading here.

You are invited to map a Maple Tree Spiral trail of your own to explore here: Maple Tree Spiral Geo Location Map

Visit the Facebook Event page to see posts on upcoming activities. Thanks!

Related Events

SATURDAY JUNE 22, 2PM
• Cease Wyss — K’emk’emel’ay: Large Groves of Maples – Stories of Maples and Other Skwxwu7mesh stories

SATURDAY JUNE 29, 2PM
• Egan Davis — Tree Walk through Gastown, Strathcona and Chinatown

SATURDAY JULY 6, 2PM
• Sepideh Saii and Daniel Negatu — Stories of Trees from Iran and Ethiopia
• Maple Tree Spiral Reception, 4pm onwards

SATURDAY JULY 13, 3PM
• Kw’eskás stl’a7shn — Anne Riley with T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss — Plant talk and community picnic with bannock and berries, Cottonwood Gardens, south-east corner of Strathcona Park, 1280 Raymur Ave, Vancouver

THURSDAY JULY 25
• Laiwan workshop with Environmental Youth Alliance

Art at Women Deliver Conference 2019

Thanks Germaine Koh for organizing this exhibit for Women Deliver at the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch, June 3 - 21, 2019.

Women Deliver is well-known for hosting global conferences that bring together people from across a multitude of sectors, issues, and cultures. Held every three years, Women Deliver conferences are fueling stations where organizations and individuals leave re-energized, knowledgeable, connected, and challenged to think outside the box.

More details on the Women Deliver 2019 Conference can be found at WD2019.org

Recollective website for "Archival Intuitions and Annotations" now online

The Recollective website for "Archival Intuitions and Annotations" with Cindy Mochizuki, Elizabeth MacKenzie, and Laiwan in response to Christine D'Onofrio's project "Intuition Commons" and the Belkin Gallery Archives at The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is now online:.

https://archivesweek.ca/events/intuition-commons-workshop

Thanks to Carol J Williams, Kati Campbell, all from the (N)on Commercial, Anna Tidlund, Naomi Sawada, Christine D'Onofrio, Owen Sopotiuk, and the Belkin Gallery.

S19 Residency at Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts (WA)

A few photos from the Spring 2019 MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College, with special thanks to guest artist Ron Johnson (Makah) for his generosity guiding us in uncolonial ways; to guests Celeste Dybeck (Jamestown S'Klallam) and Jo Blair, co-coordinators of the Native Connections Action Group, for showing us the Chetzemoka Trail Walk; and to our vibrant MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts (MFAIA-WA) community of wonderful students, alumni, staff and faculty at Fort Worden, Port Townsend, WA! Our semester begins!

Creative City Strategy Symposium

It was my pleasure to be on the panel Land and Bodies: Reconciliation & Cultural Redress in Public Art at the Creative City Strategy symposium organized by Cultural Services of the City of Vancouver, on March 4, 2019, at the Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton Street. We were asked to examine the question:

How are artists claiming space to centre land and bodies that various structural forces have attempted to erase from the public realm and imagination?

Panelists will explore ways artists working in the public realm reinscribe land and bodies whose stories have been displaced by systemic forces of colonialism and racism.

Marcia Crosby, Curator, Writer, Researcher; PhD – Art History and Cultural Theory, UBC

Arash Khakpour, Cofounder; Pressed Paradise, Co-Founder; The Biting School

Laiwan, Artist; Faculty – Goddard College; Founder – Or Gallery

Dylan Robinson, Assistant Professor Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts – Queens University

Vanessa Richards, Artist; Director – Creative Together Community; Community Engagement Director – 312 Main

The Creative City Strategy symposium was a remarkable day that offered many learnings. Thank you to our Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh hosts, staff at Vancouver Civic Theatres, panelists, interpreters, artists, videographers, graphic recorders, facilitators and participants for making the symposium possible. 

This symposium is a significant component in the development of the Creative City Strategy, a culture plan to guide the City of Vancouver’s efforts to support art, culture and creative work and life.
Download the program: Symposium Brochure (PDF)

Watch the video recordings
Daytime Program

• Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Visibility and Voice on the Land  (Starts at 53:00)

• Advancing Reconciliation, Equity, and Accessibility in Granting (Starts at 3:17:53)

• Securing Local Arts & Culture Spaces (Starts at 5:47:02)

• Reflections on the Day (Starts at 7:58:26)

Evening Program

• Land and Bodies: Reconciliation & Cultural Redress in Public Art (Starts at 25:37)

Installation begins: WANDER: toward a lightness of being

WANDER is a public art project created in collaboration with the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, EOAS, UBC and commissioned by Translink.

Coming in July 2019 to the 22nd Street Skytrain Station Bus Exchange in New Westminster, BC.

Onsite installation in process! Keep posted for upcoming news here.

Artists-in-Residence at UBC

Many thanks to Gregory Elgstrand for his article on Artists-in-Residence at UBC, featuring Holly Schmidt and also my recent work with the Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences EOAS, UBC — Special thanks to Tara Ivanochko, Hannah Avenant, Isabel Jankowski, Lvtairan Chen, Eli Braunstein, and Dorothy Yan at EOAS, along with deep appreciations to Barbara Cole, Curator of Outdoor Art at UBC.

Archival Intuitions & Annotations - Artist Responses

On Saturday November 3rd, 2018, from 1pm to 2.30pm, with my colleagues Elizabeth MacKenzie and Cindy Mochizuki, I partook in Archives Week at the Belkin Art Gallery at UBC. My presentation Letters To (N)on Com, included working with typewriters, projecting photographic slides, inspired by the fonds of the (N)on Commercial Gallery that live in the Belkin Art Gallery Archives, and where public participation engaged playful letter writing back to the future.

Thanks to Carol J Williams and Don Gill for correspondences about the (N)on Com, along with Kati Campbell and Warren Murfitt for starting the gallery at 1011 Commercial Drive in 1984.

Additional appreciations to staff at the Belkin for their invaluable help preparing and setting up — Owen Sopotiuk, Naomi Sawada, Christine D'Onofrio, David Steele, Anna Tidlund, Erin Watkins, Shaunna Moore, Karen Zalamea, and Makiko Hamaguchi.

Artists Respond to Intuition Commons: Laiwan, Elizabeth MacKenzie and Cindy Mochizuki

As part of Independent Archives Week, we ask the question, how do we respond to archives both public and private? In this come-and-go event, artists Laiwan, Elizabeth MacKenzie and Cindy Mochizuki contribute three individual responses to the Belkin Gallery Archives and in relation to artist Christine D’Onofrio’s online project, Intuition Commons. The responses are open for viewing, listening and conversations throughout the event. Light refreshments will be served.

Intuition Commons is a growing, interactive database of female influences that destabilizes the bias to individualism in art. Projected in a gallery installation, contributors nominate their influencers with visual connections, overlapping stories, keywords, and links, creating a rhizomatic archive. It is part of the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: Collective Acts (September 4-December 2, 2018) curated by Lorna Brown.

221A, grunt gallery, The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Rungh Magazine, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Western Front, & Artspeak present Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week from November 2 – 13, 2018.

Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2018 is a series of free public events, panels, conversations, and screenings that highlight artist-run centre archives, artists working with archives, and the intersections between contemporary art practices and social movements in Vancouver.

The program significantly expands on the work begun through previous archival projects: Activating the Archive and Vancouver Independent Archives Week. Taking the focus and format of these events as a starting point, Recollective broadens the context, understanding, and awareness of independent archives by exploring what is at stake when artists and arts organizations confront the tasks of arranging, describing, preserving, and providing access to material history. In 2018, Recollective features perspectives and approaches to archival practice through grassroots strategies, collective organizing, hybrid models, DIY spaces, open source solutions, and counter-archives that facilitate ownership of community memory by and for community. This series of events will emphasize the reciprocal influence between contemporary culture and social movements by drawing attention to shared experiences and struggles across diverse communities. For more information, visit www.archivesweek.ca

Facebook Event: Archival Intuitions & Annotations

Ten Different Things Symposium

The Ten Different Things CATALOGUE is now available for free PDF download or print order here:

Ten Different Things Symposium
Reliance Theatre, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, BC

Saturday, September 15, 2018
10am - 4pm Lunch provided Free
Join us for a symposium to share the results of the Ten Different Things series. Artists Colleen Brown, Instant Coffee, Laiwan, Khan Lee, Holly Schmidt, Henry Tsang, Janet Wang, Casey Wei, Jen Weih, and Denise Holland and Pongsakorn Yananissorn will give short presentations about their work and findings to be followed by lunch and an afternoon panel.

10:00 Welcome and Introductions
10:20 Artist talks
12:00 Lunch (provided)
12:30: Artist talks
2:00: Panel Discussion moderated by Adrian Sinclair

Ten Different Things is a series of public art commissions presented throughout Vancouver in Spring 2018. Artists were invited to create new works in the spirit of free inquiry at the intersection of public art, community engagement, and civic process. Curated by Kate Armstrong, the series is a collaboration between CityStudio Vancouver and Living Labs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and supported by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program. Questions contact karmstrong@ecuad.ca

Ten Different Things is produced on the traditional unceded Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations

At Sun Yat-Sen Garden

Occupying Chinatown
鹹水埠溫哥華/咸水埠温哥华/Haam Sui Fow Wun Goh Wah
July 13 to September 23, 2018

OCCUPYING CHINATOWN is Paul Wong’s year-long artist residency at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden that launched in Spring 2018. Wong will be creating a series of multidisciplinary artworks based on 700 letters in Chinese sent by 90 writers to his mother Suk-Fong Wong.

This residency will evoke memories and loss for the generations of Chinese-Canadians who built a community within a segregated Chinatown. OCCUPYING CHINATOWN throughout the seasons will feature collaborative contemporary works of art with various artists, and will engage visitors and community with diverse programming, workshops, performances, events, and a book.

The first new site-specific work to be created as part of this residency is 鹹水埠溫哥華/咸水埠温哥华/Haam Sui Fow Wun Goh Wah (Saltwater City-Vancouver). These two text pieces acknowledge Chinatown’s Toisanese settlers, and are presented at the Garden: one “wooden” and the other neon.

In addition, there is an exhibition of LAIWAN’s film Movement for Two Grannies: Five Variations in the Scholar’s Study. This piece features two Chinese grannies engaged in a moment of intimate and affectionate friendship. Paul Wong has been creating daring work for over 40 years, pushing the boundaries of conventional cultural stereotypes and art. He has produced large-scale interdisciplinary artworks in unexpected public spaces since the 1970s. His work subverts stereotypes in form and content. Many works are bilingual and trilingual, meshing English, Cantonese and Mandarin codes. Works include: Ordinary Shadows, Chinese Shade (Cantonese and English) (1988); Chinaman’s Peak: Walking the Mountain (1992); Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World (1996); Widows 97 (1997), Wah-Q: The Overseas Chinese (1998) and Refugee Class of 2000 (2000). www.paulwongprojects.com

OCCUPYING CHINATOWN is a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program in partnership with the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. With support from The Audain Foundation.

In Chinatown Today

Mobile Barnacle City was mentioned in Vancouver Chinatown Today news! Thanks Louis Lapprend.

Installation of Mobile Barnacle City

On April 14, 2018 we installed Mobile Barnacle City on location at Quebec Street at Keefer Street. There is something about the brave adventurousness, hearty support and enthusiasm of young artists that really warms my heart! Taking over the street to install sculpture. Many thanks to Emilie Grace Lavoie for creating the beautiful, quietly glittering barnacles, volunteers Melina Querel, Hannah Doyle, Jack Kenna, and Mae Stark for the hard work of installing the sculptures, and Leah Weinstein for continuing vision with the SiteFactory project.

For more information please visit the MOBILE BARNACLE CITY webpage.

Mobile Barnacle City Live/Work Studio

My upcoming project Mobile Barnacle City Live/Work Studio is a temporary site-specific installation at the intersection of Keefer and Columbia Streets in Chinatown, Vancouver, with SiteFactory / Leah Weinstein, featuring barnacle sculptures by Emilie Grace Lavoie.

Opening reception and open salon on SUNDAY APRIL 15, 2018 2:00pm­‐5:00pm
Location: Quebec St at Keefer St (South West side)
Installation runs from April 15-29, 2018.

Located within the SiteFactory bus at a contentious site of ecological transformation, historical and cultural significance, and development pressure, Mobile Barnacle City Live/Work Studio examines conditions of displacement and disparity where Chinatown meets North-East False Creek. The intersection of Keefer and Columbia Streets points to where water of False Creek used to flow under the Georgia Viaduct reaching up to the Sun Yat Sun Gardens, now covered by Andy Livingstone Park and the surrounding development.

Over the course of two weeks Mobile Barnacle City Live/Work Studio will be hosting FREE open salons with refreshments including: "Luq’luq’i : a herbal lounge" with T’uy’t’tanat - Cease Wyss & Anne Riley.

The Mobile Barnacle City School will offer four FREE seminars:
• Imagining l’avenir — what is to come and a possible Chthulucene
• Indigeneity and decolonial mobility
• Strategies to counter artwashing and gentrification
• Remembering Chinatown (with guest Chipper John Mah, who as a boy was featured in the CBC 1956 film Summer Afternoon)

Schedule and registration for seminars here: RSVP
Volunteer to help: email <mobile.barnacle.city@gmail.com> (Subject line: Volunteer)

Thanks for additional sponsorship from Artspeak Gallery, Vancouver, the East End Food Co-op, and support from the Goddard College Faculty Development Fund, Plainfield, VT.

Mobile Barnacle City Live/Work Studio is part of Ten Different Things. Curated by Kate Armstrong, the series is a collaboration between CityStudio Vancouver, and Living Labs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and supported by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program. It features new commissions launching Spring 2018 in Vancouver where artists were invited to create new works in the spirit of free inquiry at the intersection of public art, community engagement, and civic process. Projects are temporary and take a variety of forms—events, installations, residencies, interventions, workshops—and provoke new visions of art and civic life. How can we create structures, processes or dynamics to produce new ways of living in, interacting with, or occupying the city? Where are the intersections in public life where artists can produce alternate outcomes?

Artists: Colleen Brown, Instant Coffee, Laiwan, Khan Lee, Holly Schmidt, Henry Tsang, Janet Wang, Casey Wei, Jen Weih, and Denise Holland and Pongsakorn Yananissorn.

Find more information about upcoming Ten Different Things events on Facebook.