Art Metropole

09 Feb. 2025

Book Launch: Property Journal by Amy Ching-Yan Lam

Artist

Amy Ching-Yan Lam

Speakers

Amani Bin Shikhan and Trynne Delaney

Time

3:00-5:00pm

Please join Art Metropole on Sunday, February 9th, for the Canadian launch of Amy Ching-Yan Lam’s recent publication Property Journal, co-published by Book Works and Richmond Art Gallery. Co-presented in association with Pumice Raft’s Undercurrents Forum, the event will feature readings and conversations between Amy Ching-Yan Lam, writer Trynne Delaney, and writer and culture worker Amani Bin Shikhan.

From December 2021 to December 2022, artist and writer Amy Ching-Yan Lam kept a record of each time real estate, property, or housing came up in conversation. What began as a simple journal and framework soon became an index of precarity, told through the indignities, dread, and dreamscapes of what we are able to call “home”. Just as property organises people’s lives, it also overtakes them. Over the course of a year, neighbourhood landmarks are demolished, politicians break promises, friends despair, and parents age. Property Journal is a damning indictment of the permanent state of affairs known as the housing crisis.

This event is co-presented by Pumice Raft as part of Undercurrents Forum —a public program that investigates notions of public and private space, the geopolitics underlying them, and their impact on artistic production. Pumice Raft will facilitate a live stream and produce video documentation of the event to promote further discourse around shared concerns with the Forum—such as how notions of ownership and the politics of private property are intimately tied to culture. Facilitating documentation is important to Pumice Raft’s approach to digital accessibility and allowing its activities to proliferate beyond its local public.

This event will be live streamed by Pumice Raft here.

—
Amani Bin Shikhan is a writer and culture worker from Toronto’s east end. Throughout the years, she’s worked to build across history and diaspora. These days, she’s undoing it all.

Trynne Delaney is a writer currently based in Tkaronto (Toronto) with roots in the Maritimes. Recently, they’ve been thinking about the space between desire and departure.

Amy Ching-Yan Lam is an artist and writer. Exhibitions and performances have been presented at Seoul MediaCity Biennale, South Korea; Western Front, Canada; Eastside Projects, United Kingdom; and numerous DIY venues. She is the author of Baby Book (2023), a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards in Poetry; Looty Goes to Heaven (2022); and Property Journal (2024). From 2006–2020, she was part of the performance art duo Life of a Craphead. She was born in Hong Kong and lives in Tkaronto/Toronto.

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