Sara Khan

Sara Khan was born in Birmingham, England in 1984 and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. She holds a BFA (with honours) from National College of Arts, Lahore (2008). Her works have been featured in several national and international group exhibitions. She was selected as one among 13 international artists for the Bag Art camp, an international art residency in Bergen, Norway (2012). She was also selected to be a part of the 13 Satellites of Lahore, a public art workshop held at the Annemarie Schimmel Haus, Lahore (2006). She currently lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

Artist Statement

I scrutinize the repulsion and beauty found in ordinary spaces and situations, and question the normalcy of the seemingly mundane matters in life. For example; how a man inside a woman leads to the birth of another human; turning the woman into a mound of soil in which a human germinates like a plant from a seed, and in the process disfigures the woman to the limits of possibility.

It is in dealing with these observations that I draw them out, to find a place for things that are neither here nor there. Slowly laying out translucent layers of watercolour, I work toward pronouncing some areas, while covering others entirely, almost decoratively as if to say “you didn’t belong, but now you do, or you did belong and now you don’t.” I leave some questions to chance, answer others more definitively, hovering somewhere between restraint and complete spontaneity. The idea is to develop a space or landscape with both extremes in it; the abhorrent and the fantastic. Coexisting to form one complete picture; thriving in the gray areas, its a subtle dance between “is it” and “is it not”.

Aileen Bahmanipour

Aileen Bahmanipour is an Iranian-Canadian artist based in Vancouver since 2014. She has received her BFA in Painting from the Art University of Tehran and MFA in Visual arts at the University of British Columbia. Bahmanipour has exhibited her work in a body of solo and group exhibitions in Iran as well as in Canada, including her solo and group exhibitions at Vancouver’s grunt gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Gallery 1515, Hatch Art Gallery, and Two Rivers Gallery. She is the recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant in 2017, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Artist in 2019, and Early Career Development grant from BC Arts Council in 2019.

Artist Statement

I found human hair a unique material to work with; either growing it or getting rid of it, showing or covering it, has always something to do with the social expectations and what is considered to be the norm for a society. 

The relationship between the figure and the ground, similar to the relationship between image and the ground of the image, through the era of the Internet, circulation and filtration of information was one of the pivots of this project. My research question was set to explore how the image and ground of the image could identify each other through an iconoclastic gesture. I define Iconoclasm not to reject or negate the figurative image but to redefine it. To do that, I challenge the figure/ground relations. The ground of the image, through the history of image-making, has been always suppressed and hidden by the covering image. By vandalizing the image, the iconoclast gives an opportunity to the ground of the image to find a language, to become visible, and be part of the image.

In Manual for Disturbance, the hair is written within the paper not to be read or understood but to be perceived and felt. The inclusion of hair is hardly containable and through the reader’s contact with the papers, it starts expanding out of the box into the space.

Sonny Assu

Sonny Assu (Liǥwildaʼx̱w of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations) was raised in North Delta, BC, over 250 km away from his home ancestral home on Vancouver Island. Having been raised as your everyday average suburbanite, it wasn't until he was eight years old that he discovered his Liǥwildax̱w/Kwakwaka’wakw heritage. Later in life, this discovery would be the conceptual focal point that helped launch his unique art practice.

Assu's artistic practice is diverse: spanning painting, sculpture, photography, digital art and printmaking. Sonny negotiates Western and Kwakwaka’wakw principles of art making as a means of exploring his family history and the experiences of being an Indigenous person in the colonial state of Canada.

 Assu received his BFA from the Emily Carr University in 2002 and was the recipient of their distinguished alumni award in 2006. He received the BC Creative Achievement Award in First Nations art in 2011 and was thrice long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. He received his MFA from Concordia University in 2017 and was one of the Laureates for the 2017 REVEAL - Indigenous Art Awards. His work has been accepted into various art galleries, museums, public and private collections across Canada, the United States and the UK.

Artist Statement

"They make magic lines on the land that only they can see." - A Hupacasath man's response to early colonial surveyors demarcating the boundaries of his reserve. 

 I inherited a set of spiral bound navigation books from my grandfather, which are often used by mariners to plot their course of travel on the water. My grandfather didn’t have much use for them, mind you. He knew the waters of the inside passage like the back of his hand. I would occasionally break them out as I sat beside him in the wheelhouse of the W#7, his commercial seine boat, plotting my finger along the illustrated shoreline as we travelled the coast. Digitally scanning these charts flooded me with a wave of nostalgia. I could see the beaches I once combed; the bays and sheltered inlets we once anchored. Scanning in the chart pages in quarters, and at high-resolution, allowed me to see interesting details barely visible to me before: the demarcations of the reserves “given” to the Indigenous people. 

 The Paradise Syndrome is a series of scanned marine navigation charts and geographic maps that looks at the invisible boundaries that are used to define, yet are meant to separate, us. The series takes it’s name from an episode of Star Trek, where Kirk and the crew happen upon a planet inhabited by the descendants of displaced Native Americans. The removal of the fictional Native Americans in Star Trek was done in order to, perhaps in speculation, protect them from the inevitable colonial onslaught that was to come. Or perhaps it was to ease a sense of white guilt faced by 1960’s writers through the use of tropes and stereotypes. 

 In drawing a connection to other-worldly visitors and their descendants, Canadians don't like to think of their colonial past and how this country came to be. In stark contrast to the aliens in Star Trek, the early colonial government took land, water and resources that weren't theirs: giving it to the settlers after  forcibly moving or confined indigenous peoples to a fraction of their ancestral territory. This segregation was not only meant to divide individual nations, but families within them as well.

 Pre-contact, the Liǥwildaʼx̱w, the Kwakwaka’wakw and the other Pacific coastal First Nations once had full reign over their respective territories. As I looked over these charts, reliving my childhood on the water, I couldn't help but think of what the government had left us and what harm that has done. Scanning the vast land and water base, I saw the origin place of the Ligwiłda’xw and was able to trace our move south. I saw where the Ligwiłda’xw, once gathered food. Where the Ligwiłda’xw gathered in times of war, and in times of ceremony, with their neighbours. The coastal First Peoples once had vast networks of trade, communication and kinship. In the end, the wave of colonialism relined indigenous nations to the confines of imposed boundaries, only visible and enforceable by settlers with magic eyes.

Born in Vancouver, James (Nexw’Kalus-Xwalacktun) Harry is of Squamish Nation (Swxwú7meshḵ) and European descent (Scottish, and German). James spent much of his childhood and early adolescence immersed in art. He learned First Nations stories, form and design, and carving skills from his father, Xwalacktun (Rick Harry), a master carver of the Squamish Nation. Similarly, Jennifer Kleinsteuber, James’s mother and an accomplished painter, gave him hands-on experience with drawing and painting. He developed his own techniques and methodology, expanding on his father's work and beginning to formulate a contemporary approach to Aboriginal art and practice. He attended Emily Carr University of Arts and Design, obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with a major in Visual Arts in 2014. His studies focused on integrating traditional Coast Salish art forms with contemporary concepts and materials.  

For the last decade, James has worked in different school districts, the City of Vancouver and non-profit agencies to produce community based art projects reflecting Canadian heritage, culture, and ideologies. He has a unique capacity for developing thematically significant work that connects all people to the ecology of place while building greater understanding between cultures. The whole process brings people together, changes ideas, and leaves a legacy to remind the community that transformations occurred.

His current focus is three fold: using metal, light and traditional formline to create totems and other contemporary works, carving yellow and red cedar in traditional and abstract works, often larger than life, and working collaboratively with Lauren Brevner to create innovative carving/painting works that reflect First Nations stories while making a statement about the search for identity and wholeness.

Artist Statement

I spent most of my childhood and early adolescence learning First Nations form and design from my father, Xwalacktun, a master carver of the Squamish Nation. I developed my own techniques and artistic methodology after fully understanding the traditional foundation of his work. I have been given the unique opportunity to approach my art from the different perspectives provided by my complex ethnic background: Euro-Canadian, Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw.

Deconstructing the form and image can allow any viewer to interpret it based on their own experiences and relationship with form. My carvings are abstractions of Northwest formline and Coast Salish, adapted to speak a contemporary language. In the English language, poetry abstracts and alters how words can be used.  Because we didn’t have a written language, I abstract form and shape to evoke emotion.

The shapes used in northwest coast artwork have profoundly affected me since I was a child. It feels almost as if I have a visceral connection to the work that gives me a deeper understanding of its significance. What I like about poetry, is that when you read a poem, you don’t get the whole picture in the first read.  Poetry can be beautiful and express many thoughts, feelings, and emotions all at the same time. Like music, people can relate to it from their own experience. It can evoke a different response from person to person.

Through the combination of familiar symbolism of West Coast formline, modern media and techniques, my work pushes the boundaries of First Nations cultural traditions and the way the world functions around the confines of these understandings. I want to broaden the place held by Native art and culture in the world of contemporary art.