Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise)
BULAKLAK NG PARAISO (FLOWER OF PARADISE)
Patrick Cruz
Curated by Makiko Hara
March 4, 2016 – May 7, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, March 4 | 7pm
Conversation between Centre A founder Hank Bull and Patrick Cruz, with a special screening of rare Santiago Bose video work: Friday, March 4 | 6pm
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm
For Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise), Filipino-Canadian artist Patrick Cruz will transform the main gallery of Centre A into an elaborate immersive environment that weaves together personal, political and historical narratives that meditate on the conditions and processes of displacement, cultural hybridity and the material excess of our global culture. Driven by folk sentiment and animist proclivities, his maximalist oeuvre mimics the destabilizing forces of modernity to consider traditions and practices of ornamentation and patterning as strategies for re-enchantment and de-stabilization. Informed by his experiences of being transplanted into another culture Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise), compounds narratives and conversations between art and culture, media and institutions, race and identity, while measuring the capacity of art to generate an inquiry within the process of globalization. In his installation, Cruz facilitates a diasporic cultural exchange through collaborative projects with local and international cultural producers.
Highlights of the exhibition include new paintings and sculptures by Patrick Cruz, presented with numerous local and international artists in collaboration including: a sound performance by Andrew Lee (public program), and video pieces in the installation by JP Carpio (PH), Casey Wei (CA) and Dada Docot (PH/CA).
A first survey book of Cruz’s artwork will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. The book features essays from academics, artists and curators, compiled by Cruz.
Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise) also marks Cruz’s first solo exhibition since winning the 2015 RBC Painting Prize last November, as well as the beginning of Centre A’s long-time Curator (2007-2013) Makiko Hara’s 2016 Curatorial Residency.
Join us on Friday March 4th at 6pm for a conversation between Centre A’s founder Hank Bull and Cruz, and a screening of a rare Santiago Bose video work. This will be followed by the Opening Reception for Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise) at 7pm, with a special Filipino meal prepared by the artist.
PATRICK CRUZ (b.1987) is a Filipino-Canadian multidisciplinary artist. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and is currently living and working in Guelph, Ontario where he is pursuing his Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Guelph. Cruz’s experience migrating from the Philippines to Canada informs his studio practice, prompting him to question notions of diaspora, displacement and the adoption of a new cultural identity. Recognizing the importance of his endeavors, in 2015, Cruz was awarded first prize at the 17th Annual RBC Painting Competition. Cruz has presented work locally and internationally. For more information, visit www.patrickcruz.org.
MAKIKO HARA is an Independent Curator, based in Vancouver and Tokyo. She has been researching and curating contemporary art internationally since the early 1990s. From 2007 to 2013 Hara served as Chief Curator at Centre A and in 2016, she is returning as Curator-in-Residence. Hara is specialized in socially engaged art practices and has curated numerous public art projects in Canada and Japan including Toronto Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche (2009), and most recently the 2014-15 artist-in-residence AIR 476 in Yonago, Japan, and the Koganecho Bazaar 2014 – Fictive Communities Asia, International Artist in Residency and Art Festival co-organized with Yokohama Triennial 2014. She is currently a Contributing Curator for Mash Up: The Birth of Modern Culture, coming up at Vancouver Art Gallery
Photo documentation by Dennis Ha
PUBLIC PROGRAMMING
Patrick Cruz: Homecoming Talk
February 29, 6:30-8:30pm
Multipurpose Room, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia
Open to all
The UBC Philippine Studies Series and Centre A are pleased to present a talk by Filipino-Canadian artist Patrick Cruz, winner of the 2015 Annual RBC Painting Competition. Cruz will present a chronology of his works leading to his ongoing project Kamias Triennale, a tri-annual event that fosters dialogues between local and international artists. Dada Docot and Makiko Hara will respond to Cruz’s talk, relating his works to the artistic productions in the Philippines, in the Filipino diaspora, and in Canada. This event is held in conjunction with Cruz’s first solo show since winning the RBC prize that will be held at the Centre A, curated by Makiko Hara
DADA DOCOT is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Docot recently completed her ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines where she looked into the entanglements of migration, colonial histories, narratives of development, and intimacy, in a town called by its residents as the “Town of Dollars.” Her film works that reflect on Filipino overseas mobilities have been exhibited and shown in both academic and art environments. She is a Liu Institute for Global Issues Scholar, co-founder of the UBC Philippine Studies Series, and the first Filipino to have been awarded the Vanier Canada Graduate Research Scholarship.
Conversation with Centre A founder Hank Bull and Patrick Cruz
with special screening of rare Santiago Bose video work
March 4, 6-7pm
Centre A
Perpetual Gong Machine of Peace, A sound performance by Andrew Lee
April 28, 8pm
Centre A
Using Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise) as a departure point, Andrew Lee deploys multiple cymbals and gongs wired in an automated system to generate a meditative and temporal sonic landscape. Akin to Cruz’s installation, Lee’s auditory and performative intervention materially echoes the symbolic decay and permanence inherent in Cruz’s work. Perpetual Gong Machine of Peace possesses neither a beginning nor an end; instead, it attempts to communicate the interstitial space of constancy and flux.
ANDREW LEE is a Vancouver based artist. His installations, sound compositions, music and photography have been exhibited in Vancouver, Malmo and New York. In 2010 he was a part of the exhibition First Nations/Second Nature at the Audain Gallery and in 2011 was asked by artist group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries to compose a sound piece that would exhibit formally the characteristics of seeing. In 2012, Lee was invited by the Vancouver Art Gallery to perform new work responding to the monochromatic paintings and photographs of Ian Wallace. Andrew has performed and presented sound works at The Centre for Performance Research in New York (2012), Kunstradio in Vienna (2013), The Vancouver Planetarium (2015), The International Symposium On Electronic Art (2015) and, most recently, a sound installation at Surrey Art Gallery (2015).
A screening of Lav Diaz’s 2013 film, Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte, End of History)
April 30, 6pm
Bestway (21 E Pender St.)
$10 admission
Visionary Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s films centre around life in rural
Philippines. Considered a leader his field, Diaz’s films are audience-testing, running between four to nine hours. In an interview, Diaz commented,
“The concept of time was imposed by the West, the Spanish. Go to work at nine, go home at five… Filipinos don’t actually follow that. People think it’s indolent, or lazy. It’s not. This is our culture.” – Diaz.
Patrick Cruz cites this in the title of his 2015 RBC Canadian Painting Prize-winning work, ‘Time Allergy’,
“We were kind of allergic to this idea of modernity and modernization.” – Cruz.
At a four hour run time, Diaz’s 2013 adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte, End of History), is his shortest film yet.
Join us on April 30th at 6pm for this rare screening. Many thanks to Moira Lang and Elisha Burrows.
Closing Reception and Exhibition Catalogue Launch, Birds of Paradise
May 7, 4pm
Centre A
Join us for the closing reception and the launch of Birds of Paradise, an exhibition catalogue for Patrick Cruz’s Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise). Organized by Cruz, Birds of Paradise brings together diverse texts and essays from 12 local cultural producers from Vancouver, Canada. Curators, artists, creative writers, anthropolgists, poets and social workers were invited to generate and contribute a text that loosely responds to our ever pervasive cult of globalization. The texts in the book attempt to grasp the complex, mobius and hybridized nature of globalization. The book serves as a space for inquiry and experimentation as well as a catalogue for the exhibition. Birds of Paradise includes contributions from Allison Collins, Nathan Crompton, Dada Brina Docot, Chaya Ocampo Go, Paul de Guzman, Makiko Hara, Jenn Jackson, Steffanie Ling, Heidi Nagtegaal, Jasmine Reimer, Charlie Satterlee and Jacobo Zambrano, and book design by Jake Lim.
PRESS COVERAGE
“Centre A appoints Makiko Hara as curator-in-residence”, Craig Takeuchi, The Georgia Straight, February 5, 2016
“Through a Geopolitical Lens”, The Valley Voice, February 28, 2016
“Where Is Home? | Patrick Cruz’s Homecoming Artist Talk”, Jenna Mae Diamante, Schema Magazine, March 4, 2016
“The Immigrant Experience as Resource for Art Production: Patrick Cruz’s Homecoming Exhibit at Vancouver’s Centre A”, Dada Docot, UBC Philippine Studies Series, March 4, 2016
“Being a Part of Art and Discussion” Allison Chiang, The Source, March 22, 2016
“Patrick Cruz at Centre A” Steffanie Ling, Akimo, April 1, 2016