Art Metropole

#15557

Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo

Date

2023

Publisher

Vancouver Art Gallery and Information Office

Format

Catalogues

Genre

Canadian, Contemporary Art, Indigenous Art & Artists

The Vancouver Art Gallery introduces Vancouver Special, a survey exhibition that will occur every three years. The triennial model offers a sustained engagement with the contemporary artists who make Vancouver a dynamic art community. Disorientations and Echo is the second iteration of this series and provides an expansive look at contemporary art in the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver and neighbouring territories.

Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo is the second in what is envisioned as a series of exhibitions intended to provide an expansive look at contemporary art in the Greater Vancouver region. For the 2021 version of Vancouver Special, primary emphasis is on recent works that hold a particular resonance for this time and place that have not been previously exhibited in Vancouver. The exhibition reflects the activity of both artists at an early point in their career and more established artists whose practices span several decades. Encompassing a variety of media, scale and modes of presentation, the artworks on display address themes that include cultural resilience, the articulation of suppressed histories, the imagining of emancipated futures, the performance of identity and embodied knowledge.

Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo is organized by five co-curators: artist, curator and cultural critic Phanuel Antwi; artist, University of British Columbia assistant professor and curator Jeneen Frei Njootli; independent curator and author Jenn Jackson; artist and independent curator Christian Vistan; and Audain Curator of British Columbia Art, Grant Arnold. The exhibition features work by artists Jim Adams, Afuwa, Simranpreet Anand, Lacie Burning, Charles Campbell, Patrick Cruz with Francis Cruz and Qian Cheng, Gabi Dao with John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari, Chief Janice George and ‘Buddy’ Willard Joseph, Simon Grefiel, Whess Harman, James Harry and Lauren Brevner, Odera Igbokwe, Kwiigay iiwaans, Chief Floyd Joseph, Katie Kozak, Yaimel López Zaldívar, Betty Mulat and Zam Zam Warsame of NuZi Collective, Oraf, Manuel Axel Strain, Valérie d. Walker, MV Williams, Lam Wong, Marika St. Rose Yeo, and Kenneth Yuen.