Mercedes Eng, Emma Hedditch, and Lis Rhodes: Everything is in the language we use
to
Western Front Gallery 303 East 8 Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1S1
Lis Rhodes, "Dissonance and Disturbance," 2012
film still, Image courtesy of the artist and Lux, London.
Everything is in the language we use borrows its title from a poem by Layli Long Soldier and includes contributions from Mercedes Eng, Emma Hedditch, and Lis Rhodes. Across their practices, these artists work to negotiate the distance between the seen and unseen, often focusing on what is or is not spoken. Just as language can be used as a means of control, it can be wielded as a tool to open up and break down structures of power.
To question power is to centre questions of access. As we follow government guidelines to re-open our gallery, we acknowledge that many may not be in a position to visit because of the ongoing pandemic. In response, this and future exhibitions will exist in a hybrid state, with content presented both in person and online, to make this programming accessible to a wider audience. Though we won’t be marking the exhibition with a traditional opening, look for an email on July 15 in which we’ll share more details of how each element of the exhibition will unfold.
Everything is in the language we use
Just as language can be used as a means of control, it can also be wielded as a tool to open up and break down structures of power. This exhibition, which borrows its title from a poem by Layli Long Soldier, brings together artists who negotiate the distance between the seen and the unseen. Using word, image, and action, these artists engage in an insistent gesture of making visible the legal, political, social, and economic systems which govern our lives.
Artist Biographies
Mercedes Eng is a prairie-born poet of Chinese and settler descent living in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is the author of Mercenary English, a poem about sex work, violence, and resistance in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, winner of the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and my yt mama, which documents a childhood under white supremacy in Canadian prairies. Her writing has appeared in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Jacket 2, Asian American Literary Review, and The Abolitionist.
Emma Hedditch (born 1972, UK) is an artist, living in New York. Their work focuses on daily practice, materiality, and distribution of knowledge as political action. They have been a member of the Cinenova Working Group (1999–present) The Copenhagen Free University (2001–2008), No Total, a site for performance (2012–2017) and Coop Fund (2018- present). Their exhibition projects include +49 30 243459-53, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2019), Finesse, Wallach Art Gallery, (2017) and Claim a hand in the field that makes this form foam, Outpost, (2016). Their video work has screened at the Oberhausen Film Festival, The Elizabeth Foundation, Goethe Institute, MACBA, Galería Macchina, Artists Space and Haus der Kunst. Hedditch is faculty in Film and Video at The College of Staten Island and The Cooper Union.
Lis Rhodes (born 1942) is a British artist and feminist filmmaker, known for her density, concentration, and articulate sense of poetry in her visual works. She has been active in the UK since the early 1970s. She was cinema curator at the London Film-Makers’ Co-op from 1975–76. In 1979, Rhodes co-founded the feminist film distribution network, Circles. She was a member of the exhibition committee for the 1979 Arts Council Film on Filmevent, and international retrospective of Avante-Garde cinema. Rhodes was Arts Advisor to the Greater London Council from 1982 to 1985, and since 1978 has lectured part-time at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
Online Programs
Wednesday, July 22, 29, August 5, 12, and 19
Launch of weekly podcast featuring selections from Lis Rhodes’ book of collected writing, Telling Invents Told (2019) read aloud by artists and curators including Christina Battle, Almudena Escobar López, Annie MacDonell, and Elizabeth Zvonar.
Wednesday, August 5
Launch of audio description of Lis Rhodes’ Journal of Disbelief.
Saturday, August 22, 12pm
Reading group on Mercedes Eng’s Prison Industrial Complex Explodes: A Poem. Register at this link.