Moving Throughlines
October 3 – November 7, 2020
Juried by artists Tsēmā, Sandeep Johal, and curator Krystal Paraboo, this exhibition presents work in a range of mediums including photography, installation, mixed media, ceramics, painting, fiber, glass, and video by nine local Black, Indigenous, and artists of colour.
Moving Throughlines highlights shared themes and ideas fluctuating within the artists’ work; themes including identity politics, family, globalization, language, hidden violence, tradition, representation, cultural assimilation, and the disruption of oppressive systems. These ideas are explored by the artists in different ways and, where they intersect, offer further opportunities for connection and conversation.
Artists: Aman Aheer, Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa, Mona Hedayati, Josephine Lee, Melody Markle, Sora Park, John Sebastian, Michelle Sound, and Reyhaneh Yazdani
Aman Aheer’s current practice explores hidden violence and the experience of death and dying amidst the mundane and the everyday. Aheer is a painter of Indian heritage, born and currently living on the unceded territories of thesc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsawassen), Kwantlen, Stó:lō, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqeuam), and Stz’uminus peoples. He obtained his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2018 and has exhibited in Vancouver and London.
Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa’s work as an artist, activist, and woman of colour explores politically-driven protest art through sculpture and photography. Informed by identity politics, feminist theory, and her lived experience as a Latinx woman of colour, she creates work that addresses the physical and emotional affects of the current sociopolitical period on marginalized groups. Figueroa’s work encourages critical reflection and reevaluation of current oppressive systems.
Mona Hedayati is an Iranian-Canadian artist and researcher interested in exposing the mechanism of operation within oppressive systems and their global socio-cultural symptoms through building media-based, linguistic-centered arrangements that demand attention and beg investigation. A graduate of University of Victoria’s MFA in digital media, Hedayati has exhibited and presented on her work internationally as well as across Canada and her practice has been supported by SSHRC and BC Arts Council, among others.
Josephine Lee’s work is informed by her continual movement between Canada, the United States, and South Korea. Her sculptures, installations, and performances investigate the psychic impact of cultural assimilation and naturalization through migration. Lee is the recipient of a BC Arts Council Scholarship Award, the University of British Columbia Medal for Fine Arts, and the President’s Scholarship for Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, New York. She holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees in science and fine arts.
Melody Markle is an Algonquin Anishinaabe artist from Long Point, Winneway First Nation. For generations, her family has shared their artistic gifts through both traditional and contemporary forms, using Woodland style. Quilting is one of the ways she expresses a connection to the land around her. Markle’s work infuses traditional forms into patterns with deep spiritual and historical meaning in Anishinaabe culture. Her star quilts are sewn with prayers and stories that will hopefully continue to hold space for the next generation to thrive.
Sora Park’s work studies the impact that globalization and migration have on the creation and sustainability of various subcultures around the world. Park is a Korean-Canadian interdisciplinary artist based in Langley, BC. She received her BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and her MA in Fine Arts from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway.
John Sebastian utilizes the history and tradition of portrait painting to celebrate and commemorate subjects who have not typically been depicted or recorded in this way. Using old family photos and slides, he chooses subjects who he feels exude a certain presence and are unapologetic in their energy, style and identity. Sebastian completed his Masters of Arts at the Utrecht School of Arts & Design in the Netherlands in 2009, and graduated from the Masters of Digital Media at Ryerson University in 2014.
Michelle Sound is inspired by the many Indigenous women who continue to adapt, create, and remain the backbones of their families and communities. Sound is Cree and Métis and a member of Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation in Northern Alberta, and was born and raised in Coast Salish territory. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University, School for the Contemporary Arts, and her Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University Art + Design. Sound is currently an Indigenous Advisor at Douglas College.
Reyhaneh Yazdani’s creative research-based practice revolves around identity, migration, and nomadism. She explores notions of place, loss and longing, and expressions of power through material inquiry, poetry and critical writing. Philosophical discourses related to the phenomenology of place, fragmentation, and rhizomatic structures exist in parallel with Yazdani’s personal narratives of being a nomad, being a person of color, of experiencing post-war circumstances in the Middle-East, living in the diaspora, and writing from right to left. Yazdani received a Master of Architecture from the University of Tehran in 2017 and a MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2019, where she currently teaches.