Vancouver Art Gallery's Where do we go from here? makes space for bold new BIPOC voices
The facility sees the wide-ranging show of Black, Asian, and Indigenous works as a first step to opening doors
Chantal Gibson’s Untitled Redacted Text, 2019, courtesy of the artist.
The Vancouver Art Gallery presents Where do we go from here? until May 30, 2021. See COVID protocols here
IN CHANTAL Gibson’s installation Untitled Redacted Text, black ink appears to ooze out from the pages of a stack of red Canadian Encyclopedia volumes, dripping down their sides. It’s a vivid representation of the way Black voices have been redacted from history--including art history.
It’s just one of many striking new works in a new exhibit called Where do we go from here? at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The title’s open-ended question is one everyone seems to be asking in the dying days of 2020, a year of not only pandemic-enforced reflection but of Black Lives Matter protests and massive socio-cultural shifts.
In the case of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the question comes on the eve of its 90th anniversary, as it looks at what the next nine decades should look like.
The bold and wide-reaching show of recent work by BIPOC artists attempts to start the complicated process of answering that question, through a range of media. Amid the work are vibrant embroidered textile works, moccasins crafted from cardboard beer boxes and denim, photographic portrait series, and more.
Jessie Addo’s Chapter 43, 2018 (detail), courtesy of the artist.
The death of George Floyd and the BLM movement “shone a light on the existing biases in the art world,” said VAG interim chief curator Diana Freundl, at a press preview of Where do we go from here?. She added the exhibit, with its purposely open-ended title, not only questions the Eurocentric bent of art institutions, but reflects the VAG’s “plans for adjusting these biases.”
The show is a collaboration between six VAG curators--including Freundl, assistant curator Zoë Chan, assistant curator Mandy Ginson, Indigenous advisor Tarah Hogue, assistant curator Siobhan McCracken Nixon, and associate curator Stephanie Rebick--as well as guest curator Nya Lewis, of BlackArt Gastown.
“It’s not just about calling out the institution. It’s also about what’s next,” Lewis tells Stir. “The question is: Does your gallery accurately represent the Canadian art canon? We’re missing out on great art. When our work or stories—BIPOC artists’ or curators’—are absent, what happens? It’s about looking at the reality of why we aren’t there and how exclusion is perpetuated.”
Lewis, who is also a writer and artist, has created a site-specific, text-based installation that introduces visitors to the exhibit in the facility’s neo-classical third-floor rotunda. It features panels of text in formal black typography on white (the voice of authority, or the institution, she says), “interrupted” by phrases in reverse white on black (“WE ARE NO MYTH”; “WHERE THEY DIDN’T SPEAK OUR NAMES, SPEAK THEM”--phrases inspired by conversations Lewis said she had with the community, her mentors, and artists in their studios).
Look down to the baseboards around the rotunda, where Lewis has listed the titles of national exhibits that have featured the work of Black curators and artists, including that of the seminal 1989 show by Buseje Bailey called Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter. It asserts the history of Afro-diasporic art in this country and defies any misconceptions that Black curators and artists don’t exist in Canada.
Among the loaned pieces by Black artists that Lewis helped bring to the show is a series of photos by Toronto artist Jessie Addo, whose cinematic-feeling portraits capture the Black urban male in new ways--in contemplation, going about his life. They’re placed along a swath of black that runs along one wall, bringing to mind not onlya strip of film but also notions of interrupting the space. In 2018’s Chapter 43, a man in gold chains and tattoos makes eye contact with the viewer as he relaxes on his concrete apartment balcony.
“It was extra special to be able to include an artist from Scarborough, whose work reflects my upbringing and surroundings. I'm from Scarborough, and those were taken five minutes from the house I grew up in,” Lewis explains. “This work, and so many others in the exhibit, adds a layer of agency and authenticity to the presented voice, shifting the way we think about Black aesthetic.”
Elsewhere, Lewis is just as excited about wall-spanning, multicoloured embroidered quilt panels by Ontario-born Vancouver artist Jan Wade--part of the VAG collection. A mix of African and North American embroidering techniques, its title Breathe makes reference to the last words of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man killed in 2014 after being put in a chokehold by New York City Police. Each meticulous stitch reads as a life-sustaining breath.
Charlene Vickers’ Sleep Walking. Photo by Barb Choit, courtesy of Macauley & Co. Fine Arts
In another room, Tafui’s giant black-and-white Patois, on loan for the show from the artist, is both striking abstract art and an ode to precolonial art- and mark-making.
The diversity of the media and messages within the show’s pieces by Black creators are just part of an even wider array amid the other artists of colour here.
A standout is artist Charlene Vickers’ Sleep Walking, an installation featuring a circle of 12 1920s bedroom chairs, each with a neatly folded blanket with a pair of moccasins on it. Look closely, and you’ll see the often beautifully beaded footwear is crafted from such unexpected materials as Kokanee beer boxes or denim. Though crafting the moccasins is a way for the artist to reconnect with her Anishnabe heritage, their materials comment on everything from the appropriation of Coast Salish wilderness to sell beer to the commodification of Indigenous craft for tourists. Sometimes they’re emblazoned with letter beading the spells out more political assertions (“Reclaiming Your spirit / Work Hard”). But there’s also a haunting absence to the empty moccasins as well.
Audie Murray’s Bundled Objects, 2019, quartz, cinder, braided fabric Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery
Other highlights include Saskatchewan-born Métis artist Audie Murray’s Bundled Objects, cinderblock forms and raw quartz wrapped in brightly coloured fabric--an installation that uses the language of traditional braided rugs to speak to everything from overdevelopment to resource extraction.
Elsewhere, Lauren Brevner and James Nexw’Kalus-Xwalacktun Harry mix Indigenous carving with elements of traditional Japanese art; one piece, Sna7m (Strong Spirit), mixes yellow cedar and copper-leaf design with the exquisite patterns of yūzen and chiyogami.
There is much more. And that diversity of voice, form, and material speaks to the multipathed road ahead for the Vancouver Art Gallery, as it tries to open its spaces to a broader range of voices--in this facility, and beyond to its planned new structure. The gallery stresses that Where do we go from here? is the beginning of a long process.
“We are…presented with a unique opportunity to further conversations on the future of Vancouver Art Gallery—and art museums in general,” the VAG’s new CEO and director Anthony Kiendl said in a press statement at the show’s launch. “This program provides a rich reference for building an art museum that is increasingly relevant to our communities, ultimately breaking down barriers to accessibility.”
For Lewis, that already means an ongoing relationship that will continue into the future. “Part of my mandate, in working with institutions, is to create sustainability plans that strengthen their ability to engage BIPOC curators and artists with integrity,” Lewis says. “I really hope that will help to shift the way we value artists of colour and open the doors to these types of exhibits and more.”
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