Green Swans: Wildfires and Rising Seas

Green Swans
Wildfires and Rising Seas

Ramona Ramlochand

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Curated by Alice Ming Wai Jim 

September 21 – November 16, 2024

Opening: September 21, 5 PM

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

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Centre A is proud to present Green Swans: Wildfires and Rising Seas, a solo exhibition by Ramona Ramlochand. 

In Ramona Ramlochand’s first solo exhibition in Vancouver, Green Swans: Wildfires and Rising Seas, the Montreal artist has created an entire series of new photographic and video installations confronting the devastating impact of global warming on all the planet’s living species. 

Global sea levels are rising as a direct consequence of rising earth temperatures. Inhabited by 40% of the world’s population, the Tropics is not only the zone hardest hit by global warming but also where the disastrous increase of existing economic inequalities can be easily seen. Extreme climate and weather events disproportionately affect poorer countries with the fewest resources as well as socially-vulnerable populations, for example, in the United States. Rising sea levels and dry climate are exacerbating forest fires on tropical islands because of changing ecosystems. 

However there are also unexpected climate events triggered by global warming, called “Green Swans,” that are becoming more and more frequent and intense and that are wreaking havoc on a scale never seen before. Record rising waves and drought conditions are causing increasingly disastrous wildfires that smolder year-round not only along the West Coast of the Americas but also in the Arctic Circle despite being one of the coldest areas of the planet.

Ramlochand’s Wave is a large photo-based woven tapestry installation suspended in mid-air, that, like the other works in the exhibition, exposes the dark underbelly of unsustainable toxic capitalism, allowing eco-anxiety-inducing plastics, deeply-conflicted discomforts, and unthinkable degradations to seep through to the surface. According to the artist, “the impetus for my multi-discipline installations derives from her extensive travels, and focuses on the ambiguity of place, the uncertainty, fragility, and interconnectedness of the world and one’s place within it.”

Please join us for a conversation between artist Ramona Ramlochand and curator Alice Ming Wai Jim on September 21, 4 PM, followed by the exhibition opening reception, 5 PM to 7 PMGreen Swans: Wildfires and Rising Seas is presented as part of Centre A’s 2024-2025 program celebrating the gallery’s 25th anniversary. The exhibition is also part of the program marking 20 years since the international 2004 conference and exhibition Mutations<>Connections: Cultural (Ex)Changes in Asian Diasporas, convened by Alice Ming Wai Jim, and for which Ramona Ramlochand was an exhibiting artist. For lecture series in 2025, visit Centre A’s website.

A PDF version of the exhibition pamphlet containing the curatorial essay and list of works can be viewed HERE.

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Artist Biography

Ramona Ramlochand is an artist and educator based in Montreal. Born in Georgetown, Guyana, she grew up in England, Cyprus, and Canada, and travelled for extensive periods of time in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central America. Ramlochand holds a BFA from the University of Ottawa and an MFA from Concordia University (2004) and taught in the Department of Cinema and Communications at Dawson College for twenty years. She has received multiple grants from the Canada Council, the Conseil des Arts et des lettres du Québec, the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Embassies in Paris and Buenos Aires, and was the recipient of the Barbara Spohr Photography Memorial Award From the Banff Centre. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally since the early 1990s, including in Argentina,France, Germany, and the United States, and was part of the 2010 World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures in Dakar, Senegal. Ramlocahnd’s works are in private collections as well the public collections of the Museé de Québec, Canada Council Art Bank, City of Ottawa, and Ottawa Art Gallery.

Alice Ming Wai Jim is an art historian and curator based in Montreal. She is currently the Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Curatorial Studies and Decolonizing Art Institutions.Her research on diasporic art in Canada and contemporary Asian art has generated new dialogues within and between the fields of ethnocultural and global art histories, media arts, critical race museology, and curatorial studies. Jim was curator at Centre A, Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art from 2003 to 2006. In 2024, Jim was inducted as a Companion to l’Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec.

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