Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Centre A Presents New Exhibitions with Lucie Chan and Lam Wong

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Centre A Presents

New Exhibitions on Historical Representation and Introspection

with B.C. Artists Lucie Chan and Lam Wong

Lucie Chan, To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear (detail), 2018, mixed media installation.


Vancouver, B.C. (January 15, 2020) – Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is proud to open its 2020’s programming with two new exhibitions:

To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear by Lucie Chan, and 

the world is as soft as a volcano: a moving composition by Lam Wong

 

Both exhibitions run from January 24 through March 14, 2020.

 

Opening Reception

Thursday, January 23, 2020, 6 – 9 PM

Media Preview

Thursday, January 23, 2020, 5 – 6 PM

Location 

Unit 205, 268 Keefer Street, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6A 1X5

 

Lucie Chan

To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear

Guyana-born, Vancouver-based Lucie Chan makes multi-layered drawing installations that often include animations and works produced with voluntary participants to discover potentially connected cross-cultural narratives between seemingly disparate lives. Through the eye of the general public, ongoing personal experiences have brought the artist into a consistent mode of curiosity around the encounters and representations of racialized bodies, specifically Black bodies, and how they all differ yet are intertwined. Stemming from Chan’s recent growing attention towards the return of a racist candy depicting Black babies, and her attempts to have them removed from several businesses that sell them, the exhibition draws from particular imagery, representation, and distinct documentation that get buried yet continuously resurface and remain. To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear is comprised of a wide range of materials such as candy, text-based drawings, a racist ad from the 1950’s, and found objects. The exhibition uses several seemingly disparate historical and current-day elements, and reflects Chan’s layered inquiry imagining what it would be like, when in public, to be not either hated or feared. The title of the exhibition is also a nod to Adrian Piper’s The Mythic Being: I Embody Everything You Most Hate and Fear (1975).

Lucie Chan has participated in duo and group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada, Carleton University Art Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery, TRUCK Contemporary Art, among others. Her work has also been featured in solo exhibitions at such venues as the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the MAI (Montréal Arts Interculturels), Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Line Gallery, and most recently Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. She was also long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2006 and 2010. She has completed residencies across Canada, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy, but spends most of her time making art on the Coast Salish territories of B.C.

 

Lam Wong

the world is as soft as a volcano: a moving composition

Lam Wong, the world is as soft as lace (detail), 2018, painting. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Expressed in painting and installation, the world is as soft as a volcano: a moving composition by Lam Wong encompasses personal struggles and familial experience as agents of introspection. A collection of Wong’s recent works and part of his ongoing research into the notion of “emotional refuge”, the project delineates a delicate and hidden sense/state of being, communicated through the aftermaths of traumas, sufferings, and griefs. 

Over the course of the exhibition, the artworks will be rearranged once a week as an evolving cartography of sentiments in accordance with instructions given by the artist.

Lam Wong is an artist, designer and curator based in Vancouver, B.C. An immigrant from Hong Kong during the 1980s, Wong studied design, art history and painting, both in Alberta and B.C. He is currently practicing painting and tea-related artwork as his main media. Wong sees art-making as an ongoing spiritual practice. His main areas of interest lie in the perception of reality, the meaning of art, and the relationships between time, memory and space. He is currently Artist-in-Residence at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Lam has lived and worked in Vancouver since 1998.

 

Public Programs

Artist’s Talk + Workshop by Lucie Chan: February 29, 2020, 1 – 4 PM. Free.

Curatorial Tours: By appointment. Free.

 

About Centre A

Centre A is the only public art gallery in Canada dedicated to contemporary Asian and Asian-diasporic perspectives since 1999. Situated on traditional and unceded Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, and in the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown, Centre A is committed to providing a platform for engaging diverse communities through public access to the arts, creating mentorship opportunities for emerging artists/arts professionals, and stimulating critical dialogue through provocative exhibitions and innovative public programs that complicate understandings of migrant experiences and diasporic communities.

Centre A’s programming has been rooted in a curiosity about and an ongoing exploration of the role of a contemporary Asian art centre. Our past and current Chinatown gallery locations have helped situate our activities in the local but also seek to discuss those local sensibilities on a globalized level. Through a combination of exhibitions and public programs by B.C., Canadian and international artists, Centre A has been able to respond to a local audience as well as build up its international profile, attracting a diverse audience. 

 

Gallery Hours

Tuesday to Saturday, 12 PM to 5 PM

 

Media Contact

Henry Heng Lu

Curator

[email protected] 

604.683.8326

 

Download a PDF version of this press release:

Centre A Press Release Jan. 15, 2020 (English) / Centre A Press Release Jan. 20, 2020 (Chinese)