Programs & Events
Programs & Events
Charlotte Zhang, Pine Street, Now and Again, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.
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Since April 14, 2020
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Online Launch: Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST
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Centre A is pleased to co-present Charlotte Zhang’s Pine Street in partnership with the 2020 Images Festival and Critical Distance Centre For Curators (Toronto).
Pine Street, Now and Again (2019) is a looping two-channel video installation by Nanaimo-raised and Los Angeles-based artist Charlotte Zhang. Commissioned by the Nanaimo Art Gallery for the group exhibition Estuary, the film is composed of sequences conceived in collaboration with former Chinatown residents and people who are connected to them. For this installation, Zhang was thinking about the parallel structure of conversation and “the ways in which we build and dismantle Chinatown over and over again through conversing.”
The sequences are edited to appear at moments that sonically conflict: a cast of local residents armed with metal detectors swarm an unassuming hill; we witness a conversation between former classmates at the Chinese senior home; the artist goes hunting in a chicken coop. With every loop, these and other images, dialogues, and sounds are recut through the process of recollection.
This double presentation mirrors the structure of Zhang’s work itself, two channels facing one another with overlapping audio. Critical Distance is located at Artscape Youngplace Toronto and Centre A at Sun Wah Centre in Vancouver’s Chinatown. In noting that both venues are located within artistic and community-driven spaces entangled in creative city planning, Pine Street wades into the forces of erasure Zhang’s grapples with in her film.
Charlotte Zhang (b. 1999) is an artist from Vancouver Island, currently studying Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts. She is interested in expressions of translocational kinship, technologies of legibility, surplus and refuse, scammers and acts of scamming. She lives and works on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation and the Fernandeño Tataviam.
Pine Street, Now and Again was initially scheduled to exhibit at Centre A and Critical Distance Centre for Curators as part of Images Festival’s OFF Screen program and has since been adapted for our online program.
Please see below for the links to view Pine Street, Now and Again, and follow the recommended Viewing Instructions to experience the work at home. The installation is also hosted on the main Festival site and Critical Distance. This work is closed-captioned in English and Traditional Chinese.
View Channel 1 HERE.
View Channel 2 HERE.
Download the Viewing Instructions HERE.
Translation: Henry Heng Lu
Captioning: Karina Iskandarsjah
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Online Public Program: Monday, April 20, 12 PM PST / 3 PM EST
IN CONVERSATION
Q&A with Charlotte Zhang and Friends of Chinatown TO
For more information: imagesfestival.com/programs/charlotte-zhang-x-friends-of-chinatown-toronto
To bring about a skill-sharing dialogue between artist and organizer, Charlotte Zhang will moderate a Q&A with Toronto-based community group, Friends of Chinatown TO (FOCT).
Centre A is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.
Saturday, April 18, 2020, 1 – 3 PM
Join us for the online artist talk by Brooklyn-based artist Pixy Liao via Zoom on Saturday, April 18, from 1 to 3 PM PST, in conjunction with her current online exhibition at Centre A, Experimental Relationship (for your eyes only, or maybe mine, too)!
In this talk, Pixy Liao will discuss her practice and inspirations, in connection with her exhibition at Centre A, which stems from her ongoing exploration of the dynamic of a romantic relationship. Following the talk, there will be a Q & A session moderated by Henry Heng Lu, Curator at Centre A.
This event is presented in partnership with the David Lam Centre at Simon Fraser University.
Registration is required. Register today at:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/uJQvcOGurzMq6NSxz8ETLS55QQXz0GLhKQ
Please email us at [email protected] if you require assistance or any further information.
The online exhibition is available for viewing via this link: centrea.org/pixy-liao-online
Pixy Liao is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York who works with various mediums, including photography, installation, and performance. Liao is known for her staged photography, where she poses with her boyfriend-turned-muse, Moro. Her works challenge traditional gender roles within heterosexual relationships, humorously revealing a multitude of ways of being together.
She is a recipient of NYFA Fellowship in photography, Santo Foundation Individual Artist Awards, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival Madame Figaro Women Photographers Award, En Foco’s New Works Fellowship and LensCulture Exposure Awards, to name a few. She has partaken in artist residencies at Light Work, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Center for Photography at Woodstock, University of Arts London, School of Visual Arts, Pioneer Works, and Camera Club of New York.
Liao has participated in exhibitions and performances internationally, including the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles (France); Asia Society (Houston); National Gallery of Australia (Sydney); Chambers Fine Art Gallery (New York & Beijing); Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong); Stieglitz 19 Gallery (Belgium); Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool); the Museum of Sex (New York); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing); and He Xiangning Art Museum (China). She holds an MFA in photography from the University of Memphis.
Page image courtesy of the artist and Shen Wei.
Saturday, February 29, 2020, 1 – 4 PM
In tandem with her exhibition To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear at Centre A, Lucie Chan will give a public talk at the gallery on Saturday, February 29 from 1 to 2 PM, followed by a storytelling workshop from 2 to 4 PM.
No registration is required for the artist’s talk. You can reserve a spot for the workshop by registering here: https://luciechan.eventbrite.ca.
Free for Members / Pay-what-you-can for Non-Members
Open to all
The workshop invites members of the public to contribute an inventory of personal stories related to immigration, migrant identities, and the meaning of connection, home, and community, as part of the artist’s research for a new body of work. In her practice, Chan often works one-on-one with members of the public to create a diverse range of works inspired by their stories.
The following is a list of questions to consider prior to signing up to be a part of this project:
• Consider a personal historical moment that has not been documented or realized that you would like to share.
• Consider a recent and memorable time when you forgot about your race, your language, and/or your culture that you would like to share.
• Consider the varying areas in your life, public and/or private, where code-switching is necessary, feels natural, or demands obvious effort on your part and what aspects of these you would like to share.
• Consider what you’d like others to remember and what you’d prefer they forget (a personal or historical moment).
• Think of an occasion, and with who you were with at the time, when you felt a profound moment of belonging.
• Consider a time when you experienced an act of racism but was unable to communicate in words what had taken place.
• Consider the personal expectations you have of others as far as how you are perceived by them.
• Think about unexpected moments that you experienced in relation to feeling at home.
Mandarin and Cantonese interpretation will be available at the event, and spaces will be reserved for those who have a connection to the Chinatown community.
Located in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Centre A acknowledges and recognizes the complex and multilayered experiences of the individuals who have lived, built, and contributed to the vibrancy of this historic neighbourhood, and those who continue to do so today. We highly encourage our neighbours, co-residents, and friends in the Chinatown community to join us for this storytelling workshop.
Accessibility: Centre A is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].
Centre A is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.
Page image: Lucie Chan, To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear (detail), 2018 – 2020, mixed media installation, installed at Centre A. Courtesy of Centre A.
Saturday, February 15, 2020, 1 – 3 PM
Join Henry Heng Lu, Curator of Centre A, for a curatorial tour of our two current exhibitions:
Lam Wong
the world is as soft as a volcano: a moving composition
Lucie Chan
To Be Free, Everything You Most Hate and Fear
Free for Members / Pay-what-you-can for Non-Members
No registration is required.
Lam Wong will be in attendance.
To inquire about private or group tours of the exhibitions, please contact us at the email address below.
Accessibility: Centre A is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].
Centre A is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.
Saturday, December 14, 4 – 6 PM
Join us for the Closing Reception of Tayeba Begum Lipi: Unveiling, curated by Mohammad Zaki Rezwan!
As we wrap up a phenomenal year at Centre A, we will also be celebrating the closing of the final slate of our 2019 exhibitions, including Haruko Okano: Homing Pidgin, and Unstable Oscillation by Dahye Kim and Ye Eun Nam. Bring your friends, and join us for food, drinks and merriment!
Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].
Centre A is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.
Saturday, December 7, 2019, 1 – 4 PM
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Homing Pidgin, a project by Centre A’s current artist-in-residence Haruko Okano, uses the Carrier Pigeon as its symbol. It introduces visitors to words and phrases she has recovered from a hybrid language that Japanese Canadians developed and spoke during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Through printed handouts and magnetic strips, along with a small table, chairs, and place settings, we are encouraged to learn a little of a lost oral transition. This workshop invites participants to find one transition word (pidgin, slang or creole, for example), the mother tongue in which it is found, and what it means in English.
Free / By donation. No registration is required.
Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].
Centre A is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.
October 21 – December 14, 2019
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Artist Haruko Okano‘s residency at Centre A, titled Homing Pidgin, introduces visitors to words and phrases she recovered from a hybrid trade language that was developed and spoken by early settlers during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Pidgin on the west coast incorporated snippets from Chinese, South Asian, French, and Chinook wau wau woven in with portmanteaus or Janglish (a fusion of Japanese and English). Through printed handouts and magnetic strips, along with a small table, chairs, and place settings symbolizing the meeting of two cultures, the viewers are encouraged to learn a little of a lost oral transition. This residency-installation offers an opportunity to experience the challenges of communicating when one is unfamiliar with another’s mother tongue.
Haruko Okano is a sansei (3rd generation) Japanese Canadian with over 30 years as a professional interdisciplinary artist. Signature characteristics of her practice are deep community engagement, collaborations in the arts and cultural activism. In 2000 she received the VIVA Award from the Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation in recognition of her artistic practice. She has extensive training in human rights, and anti-discrimination through the Justice Institute of BC, and the summer human rights college/University of Ottawa. She received her curatorial training through a two-year apprenticeship at the grunt gallery in Vancouver, BC.
Join us for the opening reception on Saturday, October 26, at 12 PM followed by the artist’s Ocean Flotilla workshop from 1 – 4 PM. Light refreshments will be provided.
Workshop: Ocean Flotilla
Free / By donation
Ocean Flotilla is the public participation component of a larger environmental art project started in 2011 by artist Haruko Okano. Ocean Flotilla invites the public’s help in making 1000 paper boats. The boats are made of unbleached kraft paper made water-resistant with Kakishibu, an organic multi-purpose medium from Japan. Each of the boats will be numbered inside so that participants will be able to track their boat’s journey by periodically checking the ocean flotilla BlogSpot. Because this workshop requires precise paper folding and waterproofing in 3 stages the participant age limit is 12 years or older. Younger children accompanied by an adult are welcome to contribute a message during the workshop or through the blog site (mentioned below). Space is limited and participation will be on a first come first serve basis. Visit http://oceanflotilla.blogspot.com for more information about a boat launch.
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Panel: Speaking In Tongues
Free / By donation
Saturday, November 2, 2019, 1 PM – 4 PM
Join guests Woody Morrison, David Ng, Grace Eiko Thomson, and Dalannah Gail Bowen in a conversation that explores mother tongues and how their interactions can give birth to hybrid languages such as Japanese Pidgin, a language unique to the west coast of Canada. This conversation is part of “Homing Pidgin”, an interactive installation and residency at Centre A by artist Haruko Okano that explores how language is a living and historical component of all cultures. Speaking in Tongues begins with the different perspectives of the guest speakers then invites the audience to join in the conversation. This panel discussion is also a program of the Heart of the City Festival 2019.
Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].
Centre A is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.
