EXHIBITIONS
umbrage
ŭm′brĭj
noun
Offense or resentment. Shadow or shade. Trees or foliage affording shade
In umbrage, three artists use the concept of shade/shadow and storytelling to reoccupy multiply colonized times and spaces. Afuwa, jaz whitford, and Nina Yañez use ritual and recreation to storytell trauma and joy, centreing nonlinear ways of being and surrounding themselves with the overlapping communities around Centre A. Vulnerable, intimate, and satirical, umbrage is a storytelling and an invitation to step away from the light and into shadow.
Artist Biography
Afuwa
Afuwa was born in Guyana, on Karinya, Lokono, and Akawaio lands, and makes art on Tsleil‐Waututh, Musqueam, and Squamish territories (Vancouver). Locally and internationally exhibited, her work encompasses language, the body, and diasporic memory, and has appeared in publications such as Room Magazine, PUBLIC, Asparagus, GUTS, The Capilano Review, The Feminist Wire, Briarpatch, West Coast Line, subTerrain, and in the anthology Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas (2017). Her multisensory painting/installation Still Salt, Dark Stories was included in Vancouver Art Gallery’s Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo.
jaz whitford
jaz whitford is a secwe̓pemc & mixed settler interdisciplinary artist who embodies anti-professionalism & anti-colonialism as a way to move toward a future where indigenous knowledge and ways of being are not only respected, but valued & revered. using a range of materials, forms and mediums they work to investigate and express their lived experience and understanding of spirituality, resistance, ancestral connections, and community care. jaz’s ancestry ties them to cstálen ( adams lake ) in unceded secwepemcúl’ecw in the southern interior of so-called “british columbia” where they had the privilege of being raised close with the lands and waters within their territories & beyond, and it informs their work expansively.
living predominantly on the west coast since 2017, the bulk of their work has bloomed within the territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, xʷməθkwəy̓əm, and Stó:lō where they have been overwhelmed with the warmheartedness & generosity of the host nations and allied communities.
Nina Yañez
Nina Yañez is an artist living on stolen squamish, musqueum, and tsleil-waututh, territories. Her artwork includes: drawing, sounds, building electronics, making code, building software, and making music. Nina’s art-making practice and her own healing from colonial and cis society work in tandem. Nina is mestiza, trans and chronically ill, but don’t spread it around because she’s trying not to get killed out here. Nina went to school on Treaty 7 territory, at Alberta College of Art and Design before it was normal for people to work with electronics and art (she’s older than she looks) and her teachers pressured her to move to big art centres (like berlin) after she graduated. Instead she transitioned (that’s a speed run of her life story tho but w/e). She used to teach coding, printmaking, and 3d printing at a non-profit that she co-founded, but that’s a sad story so don’t ask about it. Nina’s presence is unquestionably that of a low femme cybergoth, protective of her energy, but generous with her wisdom for the right people. She is incredibly intuitive and a wealth of expertise and wisdom if you’re quiet enough to listen.
SPONSORS
SPONSORS
This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Vancouver and by the British Columbia Arts Council.
