Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Reopening Celebration

February 20th, 2024

Reopening Celebration

Friday, March 1, 2024

5 – 8 PM

Centre A

– 

Join us to celebrate Centre A’s reopening at our newly renovated space!

The Reopening Celebration will feature new products in our Boutique for sale, the launch our collaborative zine, Space(s) in Chinatown, with Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, Hatch Art Gallery and UBC AMS, as well as the opening of our latest exhibition, Unseen Garden, by Chris Hamamoto & Federico Perez Villoro, curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong. Drinks will be available for purchase.

All of Centre A’s share of consignment proceeds during the Reopening Celebration will be donated to Islamic Relief Canada to send aid to Gaza.

We will be sharing some of the new products available for purchase on our Instagram page leading up to the event.

No RSVP. Masks required. We hope to see you there!


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 unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

2024 Art+Feminism

February 8th, 2024

Counter-Archives through the Practice and Hermeneutics of Care

Dr. May Chew

Saturday, March 9, 2024

12 – 1:30 PM PT

Zoom

RSVP HERE.

Centre A will be kicking off our 2024 Art+Feminism event series with a virtual presentation by Dr. May Chew that revolves around the history and practice of counter-archiving in Canada. As an Assistant Professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Dr. Chew’s research centers on diasporic media and archives, haunting, decolonial aesthetics, and critical genealogies of immersive technologies. Following Dr. Chew’s virtual presentation, participants will have the chance to ask questions and engage in thoughtful discussion as we reflect on alternative methods of knowledge preservation, memory, and networks of care.

We Should Talk: An Art+Feminism Reading Group

Co-Led by Carmen Levy-Milne and Diane Wong

Saturday, March 16, 2024

1 – 2:30 PM PT

Centre A (in-person)

No RSVP required.

Join Centre A for an in-person reading group to share and reflect on Marsya Maharani and Petrina Ng’s article, We Should Talk: Obvious Truths About Working in the Arts. As this year’s Wikipedia Edit-a-thon puts an emphasis on BIPOC led art institutions and grassroots organizations, in this reading group we look to the importance of these spaces and how alternate forms of display and communication (whether it be gossip, archives, artist-run-centers, and more) can build community care and networks of solidarity. Co-led by Carmen Levy-Milne and Diane Wong, this reading group will be structured using guiding questions to prompt productive discussion, where participants will then have the opportunity to share their thoughts and reflections with each other in the format of an open conversation.

 

Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Saturday, March 23, 2024

12 – 3 PM PT

Centre A (in-person)

No RSVP required.

Each spring, art communities around the world come together to help correct Wikipedia’s gender biases and improve the content of under-represented persons on the tenth-most-visited site on the internet. Centre A invites participants of all genders and expressions to be a part of this local and global effort.

We will be creating and editing Wikipedia pages for a diverse range of artists, artist-run-centres, and more. If you wish to attend, please bring an electronic device you can edit on. Refreshment and childcare* will be provided. 

Feel free to sign up for our Dashboard in advance to save time setting yourself up.

*If you require childcare, please email [email protected] by 11:59pm PT, March 15.


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 unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Gallery closure

January 8th, 2024

We are now closed to the public until March 2024 for renovation, which will help us better serve our future visitors. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Book Launch: Ghosts From Underground Love

October 27th, 2023

Book Launch: Ghosts From Underground Love

Lam Wong

Saturday, November 4, 2023

4 – 6 PM

Centre A

– 

No registration required.

Join us at Centre A for the official book launch of Lam Wong’s Ghosts from Underground Love. The book launch will include an artist talk and in conversation with Lam Wong and Rhys Edwards. 

Proceeds to support Centre A and Canton-sardine.

Lam Wong’s solo exhibition of the same name, Ghosts From Underground Love, at Canton-sardine features a series of all-young female portrait paintings that Wong has started working on during his Griffin Art Projects residency in summer 2019. His new works depict the powerful emotions of bravery, passion, love, desire, fear, and hope of young women concealed in the underground network of secret lover letters during their prison times under authoritarian surveillance, institutional oppression, and unjustified punishments.

Focusing on his concern for love and suffering, two fundamental conditions of human existence, Wong is again turning his attention to investigating the constructs of emotion and trauma. Inspired by and based on Laura Nys’ research on “Emotional Refuge” and the love letters of juvenile delinquents during the early 20th century in Europe. These are portraits of young lost ghosts, tortured by love, scarred and burned, undimmed by courage, forgotten… now eternally immortalized.

The book will be available for purchase for a special discounted price of $50 (Regular Price: $55) 

Details about the book: 

  • Hardcover, 144 pages, full colour
  • Texts by Dr. Laura Nys, Rhys Edwards, Steven Dragonn, and Lam Wong
  • Published by Canton-sardine 
  • Limited edition of 300

This project is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

– 

Lam Wong (b.1968, in Xiamen, China) is a visual artist and curator who immigrated from Hong Kong to Canada during the 1980s and studied design, art history and painting in Alberta and British Columbia. Wong works with painting, installation and performance to engage with themes such as the perception of reality, the role of art and the relationship between time, memory and space. He sees artmaking as an ongoing spiritual practice and his work draws upon his knowledge of Western art history and his interest in Taoism and Buddhism. Wong’s creative approach is often concerned with blending Eastern philosophies and challenging the notion of painting.

Lam Wong has been based in Vancouver, BC, on unceded Coast Salish territories since 1998. He has recently exhibited his work and performed at Campbell River Art Gallery, Canton-Sardine, Centre A (Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art), Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Griffin Art Projects, Unit 17, Western Front, Walter Phillips Gallery, and Vancouver Art Gallery.

Rhys Edwards is an artist, writer, and curator. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, The Capilano Review, C Magazine, and BC Studies. He graduated with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2014, and he lives and works in Vancouver, BC, on unceded Coast Salish territories.


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 unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Keefer St.mp3 & Centre A Tote Bag Launch

September 21st, 2023

Keefer St.mp3 & Centre A Tote Bag Launch

Friday, November 10, 2023

7 – 10 PM

Centre A

– 

Purchase your tickets for Keefer St.mp3, HERE.  

– 

We invite everyone to Keefer St.mp3 & Tote Bag Launch, Centre A’s end-of-year party that will be held simultaneously to our first-ever launch of our tote bags. Before we say our winter holiday goodbyes as we close our gallery for space renovations, we will be hosting a Y2K-themed party with our Tote Bag launch, where we have prepared a variety of throwback materials for you to customize your very own Centre A Tote Bag.

For the party, we also invite ticket holders to submit up to five of your favorite early 2000s music to contribute to the Keefer St.mp3 shared playlist that will be responsible for the tunes, all night long. 

For the tote bag launch, we will have a station where you can customize your tote bag with a range of patches, rhinestones, and markers to your liking. Regular tote bag price will be $30.  

There will be drinks, sangria, snacks, as well as a special Keefer St.mp3 cocktail that awaits. 

Keywords for dress code are: Y2K, 2000s, and throwback. 

Sliding Scale: $15 – $25

Pay it forward: Create a donation to Centre A for an X amount of tickets. We’ll pool the tickets and provide it to individuals or organizations of your recommendation. (If you’re donating through CanadaHelps, please write a memo on the notes.)

Regular Cover: $25

Friends of Centre A: Free entry

Tote Bag Launch Price: $10 (includes customization material) 

All else, email us at [email protected], and we’ll add you to the list of pooled tickets, generously provided by our Friends and supporters.

– 

*Become a friend of Centre A today to have the cover fee waived! 

*Centre A Tote Bags will be available for purchase at the event.


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 unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Intimacy and Distances: Artist & Curator Talk

September 2nd, 2023

Intimacy and Distances: Artist & Curator Talk

Saturday, September 16, 2023

2 – 4 PM 

Centre A; 205 – 268 Keefer St., Vancouver, BC, V6A 1X5 

No RSVP required.

– 

Join us in person at Centre A for an artist talk in conjunction with our current exhibition, Intimacy and Distances, with Tokyo-based interdisciplinary artist Maiko Jinushi and guest curator Makiko Hara. The artist and curator will be joined by artist Akira Takaishi. Takaishi’s solo exhibition, Place Far Away From Anyone or Anywhere, at CSA Space is happening in collaboration with Centre A. 

Find out more about Intimacy and Distances here.

– 

Artist Biography:

Maiko Jinushi, born 1984 in Kanagawa, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo. Jinushi obtained her MFA in Painting from Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan, and recently participated in a residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands in 2019-20. 

Her work has evolved from drawings and novels on themes of personal tales, to the creation of a new form of literary experience that comprehensively combines elements including video, installations, and performances. 

Her recent solo exhibitions include “MAM Project 031: Jinushi Maiko” (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2023), “Brain Symphony” (Hospitale Project, Tottori, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2020), “Sound of Desires” (Hagiwara Projects, Tokyo, 2018). Recent group exhibitions include “Universal / Remote” (Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, Kumamoto, 2023), “Till We Meet Again IRL, Best Wishes, Asia-Art-Activism (Co-curated by Annie Jael Kwan, Arianna Mercado, Cuong Pham and Howl Yuan)” (Online, 2020), “The Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions” (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019), “The Ecology of Expression -Remaking Our Relations with the World” (Arts Maebashi, Gunma, 2019), “Zero Gravity” (Matadero Madrid, Madrid, 2015), “Koganecho Bazaar 2014” (Koganecho area, Kanagawa, 2014). 

Artist Website: http://maikojinushi.com 

Akira Takaishi (born/resides in Japan, b.1985) has been creating land art, installations and implicit paintings showing distorted spaces using twisted perspectives. Through them, Takaishi focuses on hole-shaped structures as convoluted reflections of societal structures and individual identities, at times somewhere to escape into, and at the same time, be trapped by. Takaishi has had numerous solo and group shows, and recently also curated a group show ‘Subterraneans’ at Gallery ?M, Tokyo (2021).

Artist Website: http://www.akiratakaishi.com 

Curator Biography:

Makiko Hara is an independent curator, lecturer, writer, and art and cultural consultant based in Vancouver, BC. Makiko Hara received The Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize in 2020. From 2007 to 2013, she was the Chief curator / deputy Director of Centre A —Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. She has worked with many visual artists on a variety of international projects as an independent curator, including: ScotiaBank Nuit Blanche, (Toronto, Canada, 2009), AIR YONAGO, Tottori Geijyu Art Festival (Yonago, Japan, 2014-15), Fictive Communities Asia-Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama, Japan, 2014), Rock Paper Scissors, and Cindy Mochizuki, (Yonago City Museum of Art, Tottori, Japan, 2018). Hara was appointed to the Advisory director of the International Exchange Center, Akita University of Arts, Akita, Japan in 2017-2020. Hara is a co-founder of Pacific Crossings, BC based curatorial platform since 2018 that has initiated and organized numerous conversations, residency and online /off line cultural exchange across the pacific. Hara founded My Kitchen Anthropology Museum in 2020 in response to the Covid 19 Pandemic lockdown, and held Hank Bull and Marcia Crosby solo exhibitions. Recently Hara was a guest curator for Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite and curated Lani Maestro (2022-23) and Pedro Reyes (2023-24).   

Maiko Jinushi photo credits: Marisa Shimamoto. Akira Takaishi photo credits: Guenter Zorn.


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 unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

// Liminal Futures // Curatorial Conversation

July 22nd, 2023

// Liminal Futures // 

Curatorial Conversation 

Thursday, July 27, 2023

12 – 1:30 PM 

– 

No registration required. 

We would like to invite everyone to the public critique and discussion of Centre A’s current exhibition // Liminal Futures // with UBC CCST MA Candidate Diane Hau Yu Wong and Laura U. Marks.

Moderated by Erin Silver and Nuno Porto of the UBC Critical and Curatorial Studies MA Program, the public critique and discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.

This program is presented in partnership with the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.

– 

Diane Hau Yu Wong (She/Her) is a Cantonese-Canadian emerging curator based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish First Nations. She received her BFA in Art History from Concordia University and is currently an MA Candidate in the Critical Curatorial Studies program at the University of British Columbia. She is also the Programming Manager at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and has curated exhibitions at espace pop, Art Matters Festival, Nuit Blanche, articule, and Centre A. She was the inaugural recipient of the articule x MAI Curatorial Mentorship in 2020/2022 and the 2020 Momus Emerging Critics Residency program.

Her curatorial practice and research are broadly based on the intersection between technology and new media art, predominantly focusing on the world-building possibilities of different iterations of Futurism, such as Afrofuturism, Indigenous Futurism, and Asian Futurism. She is particularly interested in examining the depiction of Asian bodies as cyborgs and non-humans in science fiction through Techno-Orientalism and the current development of Asian Futurism.

Laura U. Marks: I work on media art and philosophy, with an intercultural focus and an emphasis on appropriate technologies. My fifth book, The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. With Azadeh Emadi I co-founded the Substantial Motion Research Network. I founded the Small File Media Festival, and lead research on the carbon footprint of streaming media. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, I teach in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Find out more about the exhibition HERE.


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 unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.