Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists

Film Series: Traces and Intervals Thursday, March 24, 6:30 pm

The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe St., Vancouver

On the occasion of the exhibition Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists, the Belkin and The Cinematheque present the film series Traces and Intervals. Traces and Intervals features films by artists Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Midi Onodera. Like Laiwan, in the early 1980s these artists worked in conceptual and formal processes that sought to intervene in stereotypical expectations of identity through a destabilization of language and a deconstruction of cinematic form.

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Laiwan, "she who had scanned the flower of the world," 1987/2017

print #GR340 (detail), organic matter placed into 35mm slide mounts, scanned for Giclee print, 80.7 x 55.7 cm. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, gift of the artist, 2018

Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists highlights the artist's attention to the material and symbolic vocabularies of print and lens-based media between 1980 and 2000, and features her early interventions into the logic of the book form and the ideology of historical and encyclopedic genres. The exhibition title references processes related to printmaking, while at the same time speaking to the absent narratives, redacted perspectives and critical refusals that are latent in official publications.

The exhibition observes how literary structures are echoed in the apparatus of 35 mm slide, 16 mm film and analogue video projection. Laiwan's moving image installations explore how this inheritance informs how we write and read images across mediums. For the exhibition, the Belkin is restoring now-obsolete media works such as African Notes (1982), The Language of Mesmerization / The Mesmerization of Language (1986), Travels in China, 1985 (1986) and MACHINATE (1999), which have not been exhibited since their inception.

Since the early 1980s, Laiwan has made a meaningful contribution to Vancouver's cultural ecology through her engagement with artist-run centres – including as founder of the Or Gallery in 1983 – and her participation with numerous queer, feminist, multicultural and visual art print publications, notably with local activist collectives Angles and Kinesis, and as editor of Front Magazine from 1994 to 1997. In addition to the audio-visual works, Traces, Erasures, Resists will present Laiwan's archive of public writing and community interventions.

Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists is guest curated by Amy Kazymerchyk and made possible with the generous support of the Audain Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and our Belkin Curator's Forum members.

Events:

Tea with Laiwan - Friday, March 18 from 1:30 to 3 pm

Join Laiwan for tea and a discussion of her work in Traces, Erasures, Resists. This conversational and participatory walk-through and Q&A style discussion will traverse questions and thoughts posed by participants that relate to the themes woven through the exhibition. Space is limited; email us to reserve your spot!

Laiwan Exhibition Reception and TCR 50th Anniversary Launch  - Saturday, March 19 from 2 to 4 pm 

Panel Discussion: Erasures - Cultural Activism and Periodicals  - Thursday, March 31 at noon 

In collaboration with Western Front, the Belkin presents a panel discussion Erasures: Cultural Activism and Periodicalson the occasion of the exhibition Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists. Moderated by Laiwan, Erasures: Cultural Activism and Periodicals invites her former collaborators Frederick Thomas Edwards, John Kozachenko and Joyce Jenje Makwenda to reflect on their experience as activists and contributors to queer, feminist, multicultural and visual art periodicals in the 1980s and 90s.