Entertaining Every Second: Life of a Craphead

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Entertaining Every Second, "Life of a Craphead," 2019

Opening: Thursday, January 17, 8pm

Artist Talk at AKA: Friday, January 18, 12pm

Dinner at Jin Jin: Friday January 18, 6pm.

Lunch at Jin Jin: Saturday February 9, 1pm. 

Exhibition responses by artist Julie Oh, Jin Jin Cuisine owner Yin Shi and others. Presented in both English and Mandarin with translation provided by Qiming Sun.

Entertaining Every Second is a new body of performance and sculptural work by Life of a Craphead that engages with experiences and representations of western imperialism in Asia. The title of comes from a Nam June Paik quote: “I am a poor [wo]man from a poor country, so I have to be entertaining every second.” Life of a Craphead will be creating a new site-specific work with Jin Jin Dumpling House, the restaurant next door to AKA. The exhibition is curated by cheyanne turions and Su-Ying Lee.

Life of a Craphead is the collaboration of Amy Lam and Jon McCurley. Their work spans performance art, film, and curation. Their work investigates, through the central principle of humour, the different ways in which power and authority are deployed. Projects include King Edward Equestrian Statue Floating Down the Don (2017), a public art project where they floated a replica of a colonial statue down a river in Toronto; Bugs (2016), a feature-length film about a bug society; and The Life of a Craphead Fifty-Year Retrospective, 2006-2056, a fake museum exhibition of all of the work they will ever make (2013). They also organized and hosted the performance art show Doored from 2012-2017. Life of a Craphead has exhibited across Canada and the U.S. and has been featured in Art in America, Canadian Art, Washington Post, CBC, VICE, and others. Amy is Chinese and Jon is Vietnamese-Irish, and they live and work in Toronto, Canada.

cheyanne turions is a writer and curator concerned with art's capacity to provoke otherwise possibilities. She is the Curator at SFU Galleries and sits on the board of directors for 221A.

Su-Ying Lee is an independent curator living in Toronto, Canada. She has also worked in institutions as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), Curator in Residence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, and Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Su-Ying received a Masters Degree in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto and in 2016/2017 was a fellow of the Toronto Arts Council/Banff Centre’s Cultural Leader’s Lab. Her projects have taken place across Canada and in Hong Kong. Institutional contexts and other possible sites for information are a considerable concern of her practice. Su-Ying employs gallery spaces as well as self-determined platforms exterior to the milieu. She is interested in employing the role of curator as a co-conspirator, accomplice and active agent.