The Vancouver Art Gallery's new exhibition asks: Where do we go from here?

by Steve Newton on December 15th, 2020 at 10:55 AM

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A new, multi-media group exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery looks to the future and asks: Where do we go from here?

"Where do we go from here? proposes that we think critically about the role of both art and exhibition-making in the production of narratives about our past, present and future," reads the info on the VAG website. "It encourages us to reconsider our understanding of history (personal, local, national) and progress (artistic, cultural, social), while articulating perspectives that challenge colonial systems of knowledge and methods of representation.

"Acting on the Vancouver Art Gallery’s statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, Where do we go from here? developed as an opportunity to consider the Gallery’s own collecting and exhibition history. Reflecting on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Gallery in 1931, this exhibition both acknowledges the under-representation of African diasporic artists in our collection and exhibitions, which have historically privileged European art traditions, and reimagines how the next 90 years of programming can better represent Canada’s art landscape."

Cindy Mochizuki, Sue Sada Was Here, 2018, single-channel video, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Acquisition Fund

Artists taking part in Where do we go from here? include Jessie Addo, Rebecca Bair, Lauren Brevner and James Nexw’Kalus-Xwalacktun Harry, Vanessa Brown, Gabi Dao, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Chantal Gibson, Maureen Gruben, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Ocean Hyland, Nanyamka (Nya) Lewis, Cindy Mochizuki, Audie Murray, Gailan Ngan, Tafui, Charlene Vickers, Jan Wade, Tania Willard, Hyung-Min Yoon and Elizabeth Zvonar.

Audie Murray, Bundled Objects, 2019, quartz, cinder, braided fabric Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Purchased with Proceeds from the Audain Emerging Artists Acquisition Fund, Photo: Isaac Forsland, Courtesy of Fazakas Gallery

The exhibition was curated by assistant curators Zoë Chan, Mandy Ginson, and Siobhan McCracken Nixon; interim chief curator Diana Freundl, Indigenous advisor Tarah Hogue, associate curator Stephanie Rebick, and guest curator Nya Lewis of BlackArt Gastown. It runs until May 30, 2021, and you can learn more about it here.

Also currently on exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery are Modern in the Making: Post-War Craft and Design in British Columbia, until January 3; Rapture, Rhythm, and the Tree of Life: Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries, until January 22; Victor Vasarely, until April 5; Uncommon Language, until April 5; and Op Art in Vancouver, until April 21.