Lacunae: The spaces that could be

Lacunae: The spaces that could be

Phoebe Bei, Kaila Bhullar, Rawan Hassan

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July 11 – July 27, 2024

Opening: July 11, 5 – 8 PM

Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12 PM – 6 PM

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Centre A is proud to present Lacunae: The spaces that could be, a group exhibition by Phoebe Bei, Kaila Bhullar and Rawan Hassan. This exhibition is part of our SLOW Relations + Practices Emerging BIPOC Artist Residency this year. 

SLOW Relations + Practices is part of Centre A’s 25th Anniversary programming that revisits the organization’s rich history as the only public gallery in Canada that focuses on Asian and Asian diasporic perspectives. The program is a new and revised iteration of Makiko Hara’s project of the same name at Centre A in 2010. Initiated by a working group of diverse, local cultural producers including Lorna Brown, Candice Hopkins, Elizabeth MacKenzie, Marian Penner Bancroft, Makiko Hara, Liz Park, Elspeth Pratt and Jin-me Yoon. Led by Hara, the early iteration of the project addresses the pressing issue of time—slow and hurriedness. 

For the 2024 edition, the project returns to these questions in the present, especially during times of urgent global and ecological catastrophes. What is the renewed condition of artistic practices and production? How do we incorporate slowness as a methodology of care in the current condition? How can slowness create time and space for meaningful interactions and collaborative learning? Through the program, we hope to explore these questions through not only the work of the three artists, but also critically challenge the way the arts and cultural sector currently operates that leads to mass burn out of workers. How can we work more consciously towards structures that embody slowness, rest, and intentional relationship building in art making? The title of the exhibition, Lacunae, represents an unfilled space or interval; a gap. Within our current capitalistic and colonial ideals, we focus on survival from scarcity and loneliness. By intentionally embracing slowness in each of their works and creating in close proximity to each other within the gallery, the artists collaboratively shape an alternative space that foregrounds care, empathy and intimacy to wander and dream of what the world could be.

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Artist Biography

Phoebe Bei (website) is an interdisciplinary artist working largely in image-based processes and installation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land, and how land is occupied and disseminated in the production of home, culture and identity. Bei was British Columbia’s recipient of the BMO 1st Art! Prize in 2018 and holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University. She has exhibited work for the Audain Gallery, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, James Black Gallery, Unitt/Pitt and Or Gallery. She was a recent artist resident at the Contemporary Art Gallery, 2022 and Griffin Arts Project, 2023.

Kaila Bhullar (website, Instagram) is a second-gen Indo-Chilean-Canadian experimental filmmaker + multimedia artist based in the stolen territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh tribes. Informed by digitally-based art forms, Bhullar explores themes around identity and perception, using their experience as a queer/biracial human to contemplate the abstractions within them. These inquiries often manifest as collages of varying forms, audiovisual works, and multimedia installations. Recent exhibition and screening history includes What Lab, 2024; The James Black Gallery, 2023; XINEMA, 2023; The Polygon Gallery, 2022; Massy Arts Gallery, 2022; UNIT/PITT, 2022; and The Small File Media Festival, 2020. Current projects include video work on display with Gallery Gachet’s BIPOC New Media Screen, Queer Arts Festival, and a hybrid work for an upcoming exhibition with Dirty Dishes Collective in 2025.

Rawan Hassan (Instagram) is an artist based in the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (so called “Vancouver, Canada”). Her artwork explores realism and abstraction through patterning, linework, and textiles. Her goal is to create work that reflects the cultures, experiences, and perspectives that she grew up in and continues to evolve with. She is interested in creating work that reflects the world around her while also investigating possibilities of what could be. (headshot by Muhannad Fahmy)

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This program is funded by the BC Multiculturalism & Anti-Racism Grant.

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