Artspeak

Artspeak welcomes artist Mia Glanz on view at Artspeak off-site 320 Carrall St. September 13 to December 14 2024.

Becky’s Purse is an archive of the contents of a handbag and the scribbled fragments of thoughts mirroring the belongings of Becky, a friend of the artist who lives with substance use and mental illness in Vancouver. The purse holds the tools that facilitate everyday life. In this sequence, Mia builds a homage to her friend’s identity in paraphernalia and in the Y2K aesthetic, which she still channels in her dress and grooming from when they grew up together. In an iteration of a book project published with the same title in 2023, the numbered images in the archive perform as evidence; an examination of the mundane is an open-ended process of searching for a perpetrator behind the evolving epidemic. Mia and Becky first became friends in Grade two. They were partnered to draw each other and to describe their partner to the class. For Mia, photography preserves the memory and reality of Becky’s experiences. Cataloging her preoccupations, “Becky’s Purse” is an exercise in empathetically seeing and the implications of being seen.

Artspeak proudly supports the screening of "A Mother Apart" at the 36th Vancouver Q***r Film festival running September 11 - 22, 2024. ***rfilmfest is Western Canada’s largest q***r film festival with a mission to illuminate, celebrate, and transform 2SLGBTQIA+ lives through film, education, and dialogue.

Join us on September 19, 2024 at VIFF Theater

Powerhouse Jamaican-American poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin embarks on a deeply personal journey to uncover the mysterious past of her elusive mother, Hazel–a woman whose absence has shaped Staceyann’s poetry, politics, and bond with her daughter, Zuri. Traveling from Brooklyn to Montreal, Cologne to Jamaica, Staceyann navigates a complex emotional landscape as she grapples with Hazel’s choices. She must also balance her enduring childhood pain with the profound joy of motherhood. In her feature debut, Laurie Townshend’s lens infuses the film with warmth and profound understanding. Townshend, who shares multiple identities and lived experiences with Chin, creates a beautiful synergy with her subject where honesty and love are embraced fully.

Laurie Townshend, Canada, 2024, 89 min, English, German

TONIGHT!

Join us on September 5, 7pm, for the re-launch of Yaniya Lee’s sold-out book Selected Writing on Black Canadian Art. A compendium of essays, reviews, and artist interviews, written by Lee and mostly published between 2017 and 2021, the publication gathers the testimonies and achievements of African diasporic artists and curators from across Canada and beyond.

On the occasion of the book’s second printing by Art Metropole and figure ground, Lee will be in conversation with Artspeak’s Director Nya Lewis and The Polygon Gallery’s Curator Elliott Ramsey about the importance of writing Black Canadian art history. The discussion will be followed by a book signing.

Presented in partnership with Polygon Gallery

Doors at 6:30pm
Conversation at 7:00pm
Signing at 8:00pm

Image courtesy of Art Métropole

Lots to see, touch, and engage at "Measured By Hand" Artists .florence.yee and expand of the historical influences in their material practices. The exhibition is on view till September 28, 2024.

A Strange Kind of Urn II, a paper pulp sculpture mounted on the wall, directly incorporates text from Morte e Vida Severina, among other texts, acting as a physical citation. The piece references the dry surface of the sertão, delving into language abstraction and the concept of hidden and inaccessible archives, reflecting how knowledge and narratives are often fragmented and obscured.
-Exceprt written by Vitoria Monteiro

Whereas traditions of stained glass elevated the spiritual connection between a person of faith and their sacred spaces, glass blocks were popularized in the 1930’s for the betterment of productivity in dense urban areas. Before widespread electrification, glass blocks were incorporated into architecture to bring the sun into previously unlightable spaces. Their mass production was made possible by the industrial revolution, and in turn, facilitated industrial production, by being used mainly to illuminate factory spaces. Meant to improve the working conditions of labourers, glass blocks—and their associated period of Streamline architecture and the City Beautiful movement—were optimistic about the impact of modern technologies for the masses. Today, glass blocks and their accompanying ideals are generally seen as relics of a bygone era of utopianism, and signs of neglect in both the physical and social fabric
-Excerpt written by Lan "Florence" Yee

Image: Sophia English

BOOK LAUNCH PRESENTING PARTNER: Join us at Polygon Gallery on September 5, 7pm, for the re-launch of Yaniya Lee’s sold-out book Selected Writing on Black Canadian Art.

A compendium of essays, reviews, and artist interviews,
written by Lee and mostly published between 2017 and 2021, the publication gathers the testimonies and achievements of African diasporic artists and curators from across Canada and beyond. On the occasion of the book’s second printing by Art Metropole and figure ground, Lee will be in conversation with Artspeak’s Director Nya Lewis and The Polygon Gallery’s
Curator Elliott Ramsey about the importance of writing Black Canadian art history. The discussion will be followed by a book signing.

Presented in partnership with Polygon Gallery.

Extending thanks to everyone for attending the "Measured By Hand" opening reception and artist talk.

There is still time to experience the exhibition. "Measured by Hand" runs till September 28th, gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday 12PM to 6PM. We look forward to welcoming you!

Image: Sophia English

UPCOMING: September 7 2024 11am-2pm
Please RSVP to [email protected] by September 6 2024. Please note we will cap the event at 12 attendees. 

Artspeak welcomes Yaniya Lee. 

In its second iteration, Song. Prayer. Scream writing workshop asks us to consider the ways artists offer pathways of escape from everyday oppressions—sites of pleasure outside expected forms of work, gender, family, and desire. Art critic Yaniya Lee guides a 3 hour writing intensive that traces their thinking and questions around Blackness & Modernity, Black Technologies, Sousveillance, Repair & Healing & Pleasure. Theory, visual art, poetry, literature, considerations of art criticism and new expansive ways of seeing. Writers, scholars, and poets such as Dionne Brand, Lucille Clifton, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Katherine McKittrick, Amber Jamila Musser, Aria Dean, Harmony Holiday, Edouard Glissant, M. Nourbese Phillip, Simone Browne, and Sylvia Wynter, among others, act as Song. Prayer. Scream's northstars.

Yaniya Lee is the author of Selected Writing on Black Canadian Art (2024, figure ground), and Buseje Bailey: Reasons Why We Have to Disappear Every Once in a While, A Black Art History Project (2024, Artexte). She has written about art for museums and galleries across Canada, as well as for The New York Times Magazine, British Vogue, Flash Art, The FADER, Art in America, Chatelaine, Asia Art Archive, Canadian Art and C Magazine. Lee is a PhD student in the department of Gender Studies at Queens University

Thank you to everyone that attended the opening of "Measured by Hand"

NEXT UP: Saturday August 17th at 3PM artists .florence.yee and in conversation with curatorial collective

Lan “Florence” Yee is a visual artist and cultural worker based in Tkaronto/Toronto & Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. They collect text in underappreciated places and ferment it until it is too suspicious to ignore. Lan’s work has been exhibited at the Textile Museum of Canada (2023) Darling Foundry (2022), the Toronto Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), and the Gardiner Museum (2019)

Vitória Monteiro (aka veto) is a visual artist, cultural worker and facilitator based in the unseeded territories of the sḵwx̱wú7mesh, sel̓íl̓witulh, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations, or Vancouver. They explore themes of language abstraction, rest, and resistance, reimagining cultural motifs through contemporary lenses to challenge and disrupt existing power structures. Their work has been exhibited at CityScape Community ArtSpace (2023), Mónica Reyes Gallery (2022), and Massy Arts Society (2022)

TONIGHT!!

Join us at 6PM for the opening reception of "Measured By Hand"

Artists and guest curators present. Please note this evening is a mask mandatory event. Low sensory hour between 6PM to 7PM.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Join us for our upcoming programming:

"Measured by Hand" Opening Reception August 15 2024 6:00PM. Please note this is a mask mandatory event, with a low sensory hour between 6PM and 7PM

Artist talk August 17 2024 3:00PM in conversation with .florence.yee and

Opening August 15 2024 
Artist talk August 17 2024 6:30PM

"Measured by Hand" is a duo exhibition featuring the works of artists Vitória Monteiro and Lan “Florence” Yee that explores the architectures of memory and considers how (we) hold and build space for personal and cultural histories. The exhibition employs the concept of a vessel as a nonlinear and intangible tool for gathering, holding, and sharing knowledge. Monteiro conceptualizes notions of rest and Brazilian folklore, and Yee articulates the reverberations of grief; together, the installation recalls domestic interiors and land anchored by material objects. Wooden support structures, fabric hangings, sculpture, and poetic fragments traverse subjects of cultural burial practices and abuse in q***r relationships. Tender and tactile, in conversation, the works build a permeable vessel that holds without containment. As a site of commemoration and possibility, it asks what might grow from sharing feelings and knowledge. What do we do with memory that is difficult or incomplete? If memory is a reservatory, a passage to which we give form, what other frameworks do we build out of necessity?

Measured by Hand is curated by Dirty Dishes Collective 
Image: "Too Early" courtesy of artist Lan Yee

Artspeak welcomes The Dirty Dishes Collective!

A curatorial project co-founded by Dani Neira and Cassia Powell. Inspired by the piles of dishes that remain after gathering, we center collaboration, care, and community. Emphasizing q***r methodologies and research-based practices, our projects take many forms including exhibitions, residencies, community libraries, workshops, publications, and dinner parties.

The DDC was founded in 2022 on the unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. As of 2024, the DDC is now based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Thank you to Kevin Shawn and Natasha Korney for sharing with us on Thursday.

Next, Artspeak will temporarily close in preparation for our summer exhibition "Measured by Hand" opening August 15.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Join us this evening for performance and movement presentation Blood Memory: Matriarch iteration 1 featuring artists Kevin Shawn and Natasha Korney.

233 Carrall St
6PM

As always our programming is free.
Please note this is a dark presentation with soundscape. Curtains will be drawn.

Artspeak welcomes interdisciplinary artist Kevin Shawn. Join us on July 25 at 6PM for a stunning iteration of Blood Memory: Matriarch

Kevin Shawn's practice/life deeply interests transcultural, interculturalism, and ethnography ideologies. Their work explores what it means to extend through the vastness of human cultures/histories and work through notions of allegiance or difference. Shawn's work investigates the exclusive/oppressive epistemologies and ontologies of the Global North and creates pedagogical practices that center knowledge sharing and acquiring of cultures of the Global South. Current research sites include Guinea, Senegal, and London, England. Kevin is completing his MFA at The University of The Arts London, Central Saint Martins.

We are back! Artspeak welcomes interdisciplinary artist Kevin Shawn and Natasha Korney for a special presentation of "Blood Memories: Matriarchs". Media works on view at Artspeak July 23-27 2024 with a live performance and artist talk from both artists on July 25 at 233 Carrall St. 6PM

Blood memories: Matriarchs, Iteration #1 is a Movement and visual media performance exhibition that seeks to excavate and amplify the lived and embodied histories, migrational anthropologies, and cultural influences that are cradled within Women of the Pan African/Black Diasporic ancestry. This exhibition's focus is on the Soft Power implications of the Black Female identifying spirit that often finds suffocation within exploitation, misrepresentation, and misunderstandings of the Odyssey of Black women.

Artspeak extends gratitude to all participating artists and gallery guests for a successful and thought provoking run.

fracture/ repair closes this Saturday, June 22

Announcing an exciting new partnership.

For the next year Artspeak Gallery will steward the storefront project space "The Cheeky Proletariat", working with artists to foster relationships in the Downtown Eastside by presenting experimental production that seeks to move critical dialogue forward.

Open calls for the off-site will begin July 1 2024.

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We are officially 1 month away from our summer closure. Still haven't seen fracture/repair?

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 12-6PM. We hope to see you soon.

Image: NK Photos

"At the root of "fracture/repair" is a deep interest in the ontological and geopolitical nuances that emerge from a Caribbean Anthropocene. Really the question (as it relates to land) is how did we get here?, what have we made? what is at risk and what of our future?" Director Nya Lewis shares a list of reading that helped her to fold together some of these queries.

1. Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World
Malcom Ferdinand

2. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
Kathryn Yusoff

3. A small place
Jamaica Kincaid

4. Negotiating Caribbean Identities
Stuart Hall

5. Modernity's Antillean Ecologies: Disposeasion, disaters, juatice, and repair across the Caribbean
Alex Moulton

6. He who feeds you, Controls you
Patience Williams

Artspeak will be closed TODAY MAY 7 2024, in support of the emergency call to action led by the Palestinian Youth Movement. Although the last 200+ days have been nothing short of horrific for the people of Palestine, this moment, the unanimous resolution to continue the invasion of Rafah, marks a pivotal point in the ongoing genocide. Artspeak stands in solidarity with student led movements across Turtle Island, and encourages our audience and art community to support local protests.

Throwback to the opening of "fracture/repair" Many thanks to Vanessa Richards who opened the evening with a beautiful poetic offering. One of the best parts of the work we do at Artspeak is bringing communities together!

We look forward to welcoming you. Our gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday 12PM -6PM.

Excerpt from Dr.Gervais Marsh's Postscript "Through Fractured Realities, Ways of Knowing Emerge" on Miguel Ricardo Hernandez's The Venus of the Harvest

"Hernández employs critical modes of juxtaposition to tease out the nuanced layers of interconnected histories that are often simplified in attempts at presenting coherent narratives. He affirms the centrality of Black women in the formation of Caribbean societies through a re-envisioning of the iconic Greek sculpture Venus de Milo, restored in April 1936. Standing in the vastness of the clouds, “La Venus de la zafra” articulates a self-determined leisure as she gazes at the viewer in her bathing suit. Below her, carts filled with cane underscore the integral role of her labor in Cuba’s sugar industry, which remains the country’s principal agricultural export, through manual, reproductive and emotional extraction"

fracture/ repair is on view till June 22, 2024

Artspeak welcomes Bel Chen to the role of Administrative Coordinator

Bel Sihan Chen 陈思含 (she/her) is an emerging curator, arts and culture organizer, and academic currently residing on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam). She is zealous about disseminating and generating stories of possibility and histories of resistance through the lens of emerging technologies, futurism(s), de colonialism, and diaspora. As a critical creative, she believes art is both a document of dying worlds and a catalyst for new ones. She has had the honor of co-creating spaces at the Hatch Art Gallery, Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, Asha Collective, Vancouver Pride, and Third Quadrant Design.

What a stunning start to our season. Thanks to all who attended the opening of "fracture/repair"

Special thanks to Vanessa Richards for a moving tribute and libation, and to founders of Forgotten Lands .art
Don Broadie and Cory Torres Bishop.

Our gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 12-6pm. We look forward to welcoming you!

Image credit:

Our Quarter 4 programming is live!

Join us January 25 5:30pm PST
Virtual Talk: Meeting ID: 839 3271 9608
Artspeak welcomes scholar and guest speaker Balbir K. Singh, Dark Opacities Lab

Balbir K. Singh is Canada Research Chair in Art and Racial Justice, as well as Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History. She is the Director of Dark Opacities Lab, a hub for BIPOC political and aesthetic study and strategy at Concordia University in Montreal, launched Fall 2023.

Singh’s work centers the racial, gendered, and sexual politics of embodiment, surveillance, and policing. Using anti-colonial methods of reading and sensing, Singh builds on theories of opacity in her in-progress manuscript “Militant Bodies: Racial/Religious Opacity and Minoritarian Self-Defense,” which takes a materialist feminist approach to explore questions that center post-9/11 racial and religious hyper-policing of Muslim and Sikh bodies. 

Currently, she serves as Reviews Editor for Art Journal. Singh has been published in journals including Sikh Formations, Critical Ethnic Studies, QED, Surveillance and Society, Rhizomes, the Journal of Asian American Studies, Spectra, and Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures in the Americas.

Currently on view New Forms: that which constitutes (critical) matter
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The exhibition centers alternative forms of art-making and conceptual practices that subvert perception, revealing the undercurrents of historical discourse, as it endeavors to transform or modify materials from artists’ environment to concepts and substances that ground them. By creating outside the limitations of representational “accuracy,” these cross-disciplinary practices turn to the potentiality of abstract or conceptual approaches in materializing Black life, building something that intentionally occupies space, and positions the act of worldmaking futures within the artists’ hands. ⁣
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Participating artists: Rebecca Bair, Shaurie Bidot, eva birhanu, Charles Campbell, Kim Dacres, Chantal Gibson, Chiedza Pasipandoya, and Jan Wade ⁣
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Photo credit: NK Photo

Last week we partnered with Libby Leshgold Gallery to launch dissident 3: spatial disruption of the body.

Congratulations to author Aisha Lesley Bentham who led a group of women artists in a deeply generative keynote and reflection session. Many thanks to all who attended! We have been experiencing some issues with our PayPal links, if your purchase is unsuccessful, please email [email protected] and we will mail you one!

Aisha Lesley Bentham is an internationally trained artist-scholar and vegan chef from Toronto and has earned her BFA(H) Acting degree with a minor in Women and Diaspora Studies from the University of Windsor. Bentham attended the world renowned school Arthaus.berlin in 2016 where she studied Devising Theater and Performance, as well as founded a residency for multi-disciplinary artists/creators called RootReach. In 2020 Aisha completed her MA in Theater and Performance where she is researching the intersections of cooking and performance and created Movements with my ancestors: A multi-sensory and non-verbal performance-installation that uses food preparation and cooking techniques as participatory and reflective storytelling. Her research and passion looks at the intersections of cooking and performance and looks to interrogate notions of care, eco-somatics and cookery. In 2020 she was a Black Arts fellow at Wildseed Center for the Arts and Activism, a professor in the Performing Arts and Food and Media departments and is the head of Food and Drink at the Canadian Green Alliance, bridging the gap between theater and sustainability.

dissident 3 is live! ⁣
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Many thanks to Aisha Lesley Bentham for contributing her powerful words to this publication and to Jillian Groening for a beautiful introductory text. ⁣
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'Spatial disruption of the body; a cathartic reintroduction to the newest version of myself' is available for purchase on our website. Check out the link in our bio. ⁣
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dissident is a quarterly art journal devoted to exploring community driven social practices. Writing against and alongside limiting institutional historical orientation, the series positions restorative literature, intimate recollection, transdisciplinary dialogue, and the production of knowledge and pedagogical practices through active engagements with progressive social movements central to the pursuit of complex curatorial engagement. ⁣

Q4 is live! ⁣
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We can't wait to welcome you to our programming and events. A few highlights this quarter: ⁣
*Curator's Talk: Dr. Andrea Fatona and Nya Lewis in conversation, Nov 1, 6pm, Reliance Theatre, Emily Carr University of Art + Design⁣
*Artist Talk: In conversation/ Rebecca Bair, Shaurie Bidot, eva birhanu and Chiedza Pasipanodya, Nov 25, 6-7pm at W Projects, with reception to follow at Artspeak ⁣
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