Moozhan Ahmadzadegan‘s Where Are You Really From? is an exploration into the complex intersections of ethnicity, cultural hybridity, and nationality

Ahmadzadegan is an artist based on the traditional lands of the Syilx Okanagan People, also known as Kelowna, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UBC Okanagan. He is interested in the ritual conversation he frequently finds himself having as an Okanagan resident. He is often asked the question “where are you from?” by strangers upon first meeting. He responds, as a second-generation Canadian, that he is from Canada. The follow-up question is almost always the same, “where are you really from?”.

Language plays an important role in this work in two ways. On one level, he is interested in the way language can be used to unintentionally "other" individuals. On another, he employs the use of Farsi and English text to navigate his cultural hybridity, exploring the ways in which both cultures overlap, blend together, and resist one another.

Ahmadzadegan uses communication and language as investigative tools into the ways we navigate our own experiences, identities and our perception of the 'other' to prompt viewers to consider their own biases and challenge what is understood to be 'Canadian'.

To view more of Moozhan’s art, check out his Instagram @moozhans_art

In Sora Park’s exhibition One of Them Will Be Unlucky, the artist draws from her family history of migration as an impetus to explore the role that language plays in depicting the complexity of understanding diaspora. 

Sora Park is a Korean-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. In her practice, she explores the impact that globalization and migration have on the creation of various subcultures around the world and how the movement of people and their culture affect the sustainability of these subcultures. 

She explores how quantitative and qualitative data gathered during her research translates into works of art through text, media and installation. She puts an emphasis on a concept of translation in art production as collected data transforms itself into different mediums and is depicted as tangible artworks. 

Her works provides a glimpse into specific subcultures and issues - especially those resulted from globalization and migration - that many people may not be aware of. 

Sora Park received her BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada and an MA in Fine Arts from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway. She is a recipient of grants from Arts Council Norway, Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council. 

Click here to view Park’s website.

Steven Cottingham is interested in the difference between reality and realism. For instance, how is it that images of fire produce real heat and light? In an era of deep fakes and fake news, images lose their assumption of verisimilitude. But just because they are not ‘true’ does not mean they aren’t also ‘real’. These images are used to construct rather than capture reality—each one of them is produced by workers carrying out certain visions of how reality should be represented and what real life should be like. Cottingham suggests that our shared reality is populated by these constructed images: advertisements and algorithms used for commercial and political ends alike. These omnipresent media forms may not truly represent our diverse, individual experiences of reality, and yet they nonetheless orient us into our daily roles as workers, citizens, and subjects.

By using open source rendering software, Cottingham produced tableaus of implausible but nonetheless realistic (that is, believable) events. A car burns on a soundstage, mixing highly-staged commercial production techniques with spontaneous protest tactics. Heat radiates out from the electronics, reinstating the physicality of otherwise virtual representations. In this way, we can start to grasp the slippage between signs and their signifiers in this disorienting media landscape where nothing seems to add up.

Steven Cottingham is an artist and curator based in Vancouver. Cottingham holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited across Canada, the US and Cuba, as well as several locations in Europe. 

For more information about Steven’s work, visit his website.

In Nicole Young’s exhibition Backstitch, the artist explored themes of community and the gift economy. The large-scale work, resembling a quilt, was created by sewing together hand-dyed textiles made from materials donated or gifted to the artist by community members.

Young’s work is informed by her role as an environmental activist and advocate for the zero waste movement. Noticing a disconnect between her work as an environmentalist and her work as an artist, Young pivoted her practice from using acrylic paints to creating inks and dyes out of plant matter. Since making this switch, Young has received an overwhelming amount of support from the community – family, friends, colleagues and strangers have been offering her inks that they make, plants from their gardens and food waste to use for dyeing, and leftover textiles that they have no use for. 

The title Backstitch refers to one of the strongest, most adaptable, and permanent hand stitches used in the tradition of sewing. A community is its strongest and most adaptable when members support one another, and this installation piece was a visual representation of the value in offering gifts freely to one another. 

Young took this project as an opportunity to engage with the community through art making, and to create a singular art piece at a much larger scale than she had ever worked before. It also posed a challenge for her as to how to approach her work, given that there was contributions from community members. While fabric has always played an integral role in her work, she had never used it in a way that relies so heavily on the generosity of others. Young was interested to see how the pieces of fabric would fit together and relate to one another. Her broader goal with this project is to continue exhibiting this installation piece at other galleries, adding more fabric to it at each gallery that she brings it to.

Nicole Young is an artist based on the traditional, unceded and occupied territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, BC.) Working in the confluence of visual arts, environmentalism and storytelling, Nicole’s works are as much science experiments as they are conversations on ways to approach climate justice. She creates her own pigments and dyes out of natural and often wild foraged materials including plant matter and minerals as a way to deepen her connection with the land, and to create a dialogue about waste-free practices. Moving seamlessly between large scale textile installations, works on canvas, garments and graceful drawings, Nicole’s works aesthetically resemble collage while maintaining their painterly qualities.

Born in Ontario, Nicole attended the University of British Columbia Okanagan where she received a BFA in Visual Arts and Art History, and studied studio arts and art history at the University of California Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and abroad since 2010, and her paintings are in private collections throughout the globe.

To view more of Nicole’s art, take a look at her website here: https://www.nicoleyoungart.com/

A Clog in the Machine was an exhibition of paintings by Jack Kenna (b. 1994 in Colorado, USA), a visual artist working on the unceded land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, Canada).

Kenna engages with drawing, painting, sculpture, and writing, often blurring the boundaries between media. His works contain a visual vocabulary of objects and motifs that are repeated and reorganized from work to work so as to evolve and complicate meaning over time, utilizing 2- and 3-D media combined with found images, objects, or text.

Sprawling collections of derelict antiques, fragments of abandoned poetry on yellowing notebook paper, images sketched with a finger onto a dusty window - Kenna’s work provides an intimate look into domestic spaces and our relationship to the inanimate worlds we build around ourselves against the backdrop of home confinement. Curated by Asia Jong, who also happens to be the artist’s roommate, this exhibition explored isolation, productivity, over- and under-stimulation, and the interruption of ubiquitous systems brought on by the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown.

Jack Kenna (b. 1994 in Durango, Colorado), a visual artist working on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, Canada). He co-founded Ground Floor Art Centre in 2018, a gallery and studio space created to provide more exhibition opportunities for early-emerging artists in Vancouver, and is currently an Artist-in-Residence with the Vancouver School Board for the 2020-2021 school year. Recent exhibitions include Platforms 2020: Public Works, commissioned by the City of Vancouver, and In Over Our Heads, a group exhibition at Franc Gallery, Vancouver. Jack holds a BFA from Emily Carr University 2019.

Curatorial Text by Asia Jong

After dinner, Jack and I realized we forgot to chop up the potato. Placing it on our window sill, we found it a week later overcome with small green sprouts poking out from its lumpy brown skin. We left our new little pet to sit and stew on the sill. Passing time turned poison into the talismanic protection swelling in the potato’s evil eyes. Our new amulet was working. The repelling of curses and absorption of bad spirits made the potato implode into an increasingly shriveled, deep green raisin. It was either decaying or growing, maybe both. But, eventually our good luck charm began to fester, and swirling forces beyond our control changed the world overnight. We were in lockdown. The potato no longer seemed to protect us from the acts of God that we’d been skirting for months on end. Mounds of garbage materialized in the yard and sewage leaked through the walls.  After two years of protection, on the last night we spent in our house, we buried the potato, ceremoniously, next to the beets we’d never dig up.

A fortuitous craigslist ad turned Jack and I from strangers to fast friends and roommates to Covid companions, isolated for months in the shrunken microcosm of our tiny Strathcona house. The objects found in A Clog in the Machine chronicle the intensities and banalities of experiencing the worldly upheaval from the safety of our home. In the confines of our already small 1-bdrm-turned-2-bdrm residence, we experienced the walls shrinking around us. It could have been nice if we were actually living under a rock, but our gluttony for headlines and endless doom-scrolling made that impossible. The onset of redundancy and uncertainty made “what are you doing today?” the most dreaded question and post-meal cigarettes the most regarded ritual.

The entropy of the house assembled arrangements of touristy knick knacks, guilty indulgences, and those cool rocks I found while it was still acceptable to go to the beach. And after so many days staring at these accumulated objects, they seemed to take on their own roles in our home. The bookshelves and coffee tables, that were once burdened with messy piles and disarray, turned into the site of a materialist museum. Gifts from friends felt like monuments and trinkets started to make good company. Clutter adorned the corners of our rooms like altars of objects in a tacky temple. I wondered, “should I, like... be finding God?” seeking solace from the screen, as I prayed to the shrine of ornamental junk on my bedside table. I’d wait for the end of the day to take the 5 foot pilgrimage from the couch to the bathroom sink and pay respects to our blue porcelain doggie on my way to bed.

By Asia Jong

Tattooing is inherently Indigenous. Our hands make magic, our hands heal hurt. Through the stitching of skins we connect to things that we know but can’t always see. The works presented in As Old As The Hills are a step back to see how much is interconnected. Like a spider, we innately weave webs to catch what we need to nourish our souls.

As an artist who practices handpoke and skin stitching tattooing traditions, I see how tattooing acts as a mirror. I am slowly unpacking Nehiyawak tattooing to see what it is made up of. I am exploring natural pigments, stories, dreams, transference, and the savage. I am noticing how the adornment of our bodies through clothing, jewelry and tattoos carry with them power and protection. I am curious about tattoo culture as a whole and how the term ‘traditional tattoos’ carry multiple definitions. How do old school traditional American tattoos reflect in current culture? How does historical slang continue to perpetuate colonial perspectives? At what point does tattoo culture at large converge with Indigenous cultures?

Audie Murray is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with various materials including beadwork, quillwork, textiles, repurposed objects, drawing, and media. She is Michif, raised and working in Regina, Saskatchewan, treaty 4 territory. Much of her family and family histories are located in the Qu’Appelle and Meadow Lake regions of Saskatchewan. Audie holds a visual arts diploma from Camosun College, 2016; Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Regina, 2017; and is currently an MFA student at the University of Calgary. She has shown at various locations including the Alberta Art Gallery, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Glenbow Museum, and the Anchorage Museum.

Audie is a practicing cultural tattoo practitioner working with hand poke and skin stitching methods. She was mentored by the Earthline Tattoo Collective in the summer of 2017 and continues to work with the collective. Her tattoo practice is an extension of her visual arts practice through the reclamation and assertion of Indigenous bodies and the intertwining presence of themes like medicine, healing and growth.

Audie's art practice is informed by the process of making and visiting. Her practice explores themes of contemporary culture and how this relates to experiences of duality and connectivity. Working with specific material choices, she often uses found objects from daily life and transmutes them . This practice is a way to reclaim and work through various subject matter, much of it relating to the body, space, and relationships with a focus on the intersection and expansion of time.

For more information about Audie’s work, visit her website..

While living in Toulouse, France, on an exchange in 2019, Angela Gmeinweser was often overwhelmed by the amount of information in the places she visited. The “Gilets Jaunes” protests were taking place near her apartment and the streets were animated by shoppers, protesters, bangs of tear gas, and music. She struggled to make sense of these situations, perceiving only movements from pointed gestures, and only shapes in architecture. Her fixation on these individual elements lead her to question how she was making meaning from what I perceived and formed the foundation of my recent work.

Gmeinweser questions the process of making meaning from spaces by translating memories between different media including painting, maquettes, and audio. This process is similar to what Walter Benjamin’s explains in his essay The Task of the Translator. In his writing, he describes how each time a work is translated it elucidates a kernel of a language’s true meaning. Each time Gmeinweser translates a memory or idea between media she gets closer to the original emotion held in tension between individuals and spaces. An example of this way of working is Please Hold Still, the visual form of a memory that has a sound and physical shape in other iterations. The painting is situated in the process of forming meaning and is part of a larger chain of events which, similar to the moments in Toulouse, ripple out to reveal new realities. 

As a painter, Aiden de Vin uses mark-making to explore memories and emotions associated with place. The gestural brushstrokes in her paintings aim to represent memories of specific people, conversations and feelings. The architectural spaces in the paintings reference various nooks and corners from her home environment. 

de Vin explores how movement is a key feature in these paintings as our emotions and memories can live within domestic spaces. Memories also accumulate within domestic spaces, each building upon another in the same way that brushstrokes and colour build layers and atmosphere in a painting. 

For example, Mascara in my eye. Crying cause I’m pretty references mundane moments of getting ready intertwined with heartbreak and loss as each was felt within the same walls. 

 Colour allows for an entrance into the emotions of these works. Paint provides me with a way to explore how memories both build and break down the spaces in which we exist.

The relationship between the aesthetic and political is not a direct correlation, but depends on accumulating experiences of dissensual moments.

—Jaimey Hamilton Faris. Uncommon Goods: Global Dimensions of the Readymade. Intellect, 2013. p. 145. 

A grid of over 100 luminous and brilliantly coloured swatches, less than a foot square each, and composed of tightly-woven seed beads, formed the centrepiece of this exhibition. The beaded swatches, designed by algorithms that take as input colours from the Pantone Fashion Color Report each spring and fall since 2015, are then outsourced for production to Bagalwa Baliahamwabo, a family friend of Paul Robert, and his ad hoc team of artisans in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. 

This ongoing work is a comically tragic re-staging of the antagonisms inherent in production and consumption under globalization. Immaterial labour in the form of commodities’ intellectual and cultural content is contrasted with something that sits uneasily between the romanticized craftsmanship of the indigenous artisan and the cheap manual labour of the foreign factory worker. Capital and commodities flow effortlessly between nations that in so many other ways remain literally worlds apart. Robert strives to give a fresh visibility to these conditions, recognizing his contribution as a single node in an ecosystem of more and less entitled, provocative, and idealistic voices.

Beadwork evokes a history of trade that continues to this day. From the 14th to the 18th centuries, Venetian glass beads were produced en masse specifically for trade with the colonies of the so-called “New World” and Africa. There, they underwent a process of commodity indigenization as they were incorporated into dress, custom, and ritual, and eventually sold back to European tourists as exotic souvenirs. Today, Canada is connected to Africa by flows of gold, copper, diamonds, and tungsten. Well-intentioned but simplistic responses, like the banning of conflict minerals, often make things worse for the poorest while performing the ideological function of absolving westerners of imagined links to warlords. 

Mr. Bagalwa was a long-time correspondant with Robert's father, Aurèle Robert. He persisted in writing letters to the Robert family even after Aurèle's passing. Paul's eventual response to Mr. Bagalwa's remarkable agency has resulted in artifacts that he hopes contribute to the reconfiguration of the normalized logic of global labour-commodities into newly visible and meaningful materialities.

For more information about Robert’s work, visit his website.

Christopher Lacroix interrogates the relentless effort of queer existence — an existence that is both aspiring to and rejecting normative social structures that problematizes deviant ways of being. This paradox of simultaneous aspiration and resistance is embodied in unnerving durational performances infused with an uncomfortable balance of tragedy and melodrama. Rather than reproducing the pain that the mainstream social structures inflict on others, his performances redirect the pain onto himself; his identity and his body. What results is a queer and campy masochism that explores abject self-deprecation as a means of self-preservation and resistance.

 Christopher Lacroix (Canadian, b. 1986) holds a BFA from Ryerson University, ON (2012) and an MFA from the University of British Columbia, BC (2018). His work has been exhibited at The Polygon Gallery (Vancouver), window (Winnipeg), Artspace Contemporary Art Projects (Peterborough), and Forest City Gallery (London). Lacroix was the 2018 recipient of the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize. He currently lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

For more information about Lacroix’s work, visit his website.