Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

TechniCowlour

A The Biting School Production

Co-produced by battery opera

Co-Presented by vAct and Centre A

Concept and creation by:

elika mojtabaei + Aryo Khakpour

In collaboration with:

Alanna Ho 

ellis cheadle

Jaewoo Kang

SF Ho

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January 18 – March 15, 2025

Opening: January 18, 5 – 8 PM;
Featuring a free 20-min performance performed by Aryo at 6:30pm on Jan 18 (opening), and sliding scale tickets on Feb 12, Mar 1, and Mar 15 (closing)

Ticket Information Here

Gallery Hours: Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 PM

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Centre A is excited to kick off 2025 with the announcement of our upcoming exhibition TechniCowlour!

i just want to be a cow

in full colour

in full house

in full surround sound

free from all that makes me sad 

— by Arika Mojpour (6th-century Persia)

TechniCowlour is an installation and performance exploring the intersections of mythology, memory, and sensory experience. At its core, the project queers and remixes materials—scents; fabrics; songs; gestures; and Iranian mythologies and architectural references—into a fragmented experience of longing; and questions the preservation of culture that persists in diasporic living, blurring the lines between the nostalgic and the immediate.

Across its three interconnected spaces, TechniCowlour invites viewers into a sensory dialogue that traverses the ancient past, the near past, and the present. One room binds light with absence; and houses retellings of pre-Zoroastrian deities in the form of costumes created from second-hand clothing. Another space envelops the audience in near darkness, where the intimate terrains of scent memories and tactile interactions take precedence over sight. The third space centres water, grounding us in the present—a momentary refuge entwined with the poetics of displacement and loss. 

Our process began as a response to the Iranian film, The Cow (1969), which tells the story of a man’s unparalleled love for his cow, and his immense grief upon her death—an event that leads him to believe he has become his cow. TechniCowlour is an invocation of the body and the senses, undermining the customary cultural inertias in favour of an experimental adaptation. Here, nostalgia becomes an entry to presence rather than a retreat from it. Through the interplay of mythology, cinema, and haptic exploration, the piece asks: What does it mean to live between worlds that carry us across times?”

— The TechniCowlour creative team

Artist Biography:

 

Aryo Khakpour

Aryo Khakpour is an interdisciplinary performer, director and dramaturg. Born and raised in Tehran, Aryo has been involved in multiple theatre, dance, and film productions in Vancouver, Canada, since 2006. He co-founded The Biting School in 2013 and was company-in-residence at the PuSh Festival and The Dance Centre from 2018-2019. Aryo is an infrequent sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. In his practice he explores dynamics of power, implications of ideologies, repetition of mythologies, and cultural adaptation. An intersectional feminist, Aryo interrogates the patriarchy and its harmful effects on people. His practice is heavily physical and surrealistic; it moves from theatre to performance art to dance to film and back to theatre; it deals with pain and pleasure; it is sex-positive; and aims to queer the status quo. Aryo was trained in devised practices of non-hierarchical collective creation — this is his favourite way of creating work.

 

elika mojtabaei

elika mojtabaei is an Iranian-born writer, costume designer, translator, and dramaturg based on the stolen traditional territories of the (Musqueam), (Squamish), and (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

She is artistic associate with The Biting School; and co-founder of the No Small Feat Collective. 

Her recent credits include Draw Me a Home; “a film about a uterus” (co-created with Aryo Khakpour); Long Time So Long (Jin-me Yoon); Parifam (vAct / Medusa); Empty-Handed (The Biting School); Nunca há Nada | There Is Never Nothing (Luciana Freire D’Anunciação); Zahak, the Serpent King (The Biting School). 

elika’s creative process begins with extensive research. In her work, she examines the inequities imposed through language and apparel, informed by her experience as a first-generation immigrant femme. She is interested in surrealist gestures and the poetry of the unsaid. She approaches her multidisciplinary practice and all her interactions through an intersectional feminist lens. 

 

Alanna Ho

Alanna Ho is an artist-educator living on the Vancouver on unceded Indigenous land, including the territories of the (Musqueam), (Squamish), and (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. 

Alanna’s uses a multi-modal approach in S.T.E.A.M education which has been facilitated through galleries and schools. The Creative Teaching Lab (formerly Rainbow Forecast) was founded in 2016 to explore visual art, music and deep play as interconnected experiences. One of CTL’s current projects is creating digital teaching resources for non-music and non-art teachers to easily implement musical or creative inspiration into their classrooms. 

She is also a co-director and early childhood programmer of INTER/MEDIATE, a non-profit organization that hosts new media workshops where learning through play is priority.

 

ellis cheadle

ellis cheadle (she/her) is a theatre-maker living and working on the stolen territories of the (Musqueam), (Squamish), and (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and Mount Royal University’s acting conservatory program. She is increasingly dedicated to creating malleable theatrical set-lists that responsively adapt to requirements of scale, duration, location, and collaborator skill-sets/curiosities. She values playfulness and experimentation, and strives to make theatre that invites the audience into a shared game of finding links between seemingly incongruous images, texts, themes, and materials.

ellis’s work has been shared at Here 4 Now Vol. 4, Hold on Let Go, PuSh Performing Arts Festival, Schaubude Berlin, Festival de Casteliers, The Array, and the rEvolver Theatre Festival. Recent collaborators include elika mojtabaei, Hong Kong Exile, and Macromater (Robin Leveroos). She is currently a participant of PTC’s Block D Program, where she is brushing up on her dramaturgical skills.

 

Jaewoo Kang

Jaewoo Kang is a queer Korean-Canadian interdisciplinary artist working with film, animation, textile and performance. Born in Busan, Korea, currently living and working in the stolen land of (Musqueam), (Squamish), and (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His training in art started with visual art, which allowed him to be interested in moving images.A major theme for him is queer eroticism and how intimate moments with others can allow the self to have an introspective experience. Recently he finished a residency at Griffin Art Project in North Vancouver with a fashion performance presentation. He also has been working with performers to integrate fashion and art. Most recently he was part of a durational fashion performance project, Returns.   With the support of Canada Council and BC Arts Council, he is currently in post-production for his first animated feature film, Primavera. 

 

SF Ho

SF Ho is a porous object. They live on the unceded territories of the (Musqueam), (Squamish), and (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Operating somewhere between words and whatever words can’t be, their work is informed by feminist methodologies, land-based practices, and grassroots community networks. Ho has presented their artwork and writing both regionally and internationally. They’ve published a book about love and aliens called George, the Parasite. They’re cultivating a practice of wary sociality, never finishing books, and being sort of boring.