Valérie d. Walker and Bernadette Phan: Mami Wata's Heritage

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Valérie d. Walker, "IndigoArashi_wavezCooled," 2022

digital collage-giclées

ARTIST TALK: THIS SATURDAY, JUNE 4TH AT NOON at 602 E. HASTINGS

BERNADETTE PHAN AND VALERIE D. WALKER DISCUSS THEIR COLLABORATION

This exhibition by Valérie d. Walker and Bernadette Phan is an homage to our mothers and foremothers, the life givers and transmitters of our creative gifts. The gracious determined survivors of diasporic migrations, colonial takeovers, wars, who will always love us, their powers kept us safe. The works presented propose a blues song of love, lament, hidden stories, social change and awe. It is our intention to bring forth these confluent herstories, memories and transmissions with gratitude and humility. We want to celebrate their strength and courage, amidst many hardships, to provide and nourish the future.

In our respective fields, we are both engaged in an embodied practice and invest ourselves in quotidian gestures that demand repetition, labor and care. Haptic perspectives are incorporated into the materiality of processes, whether they are situated in: the tending of the indigo vat and slow-dyeing of the fabric, the Afro-futuristic photographs of Valerie; the active quietude of stipple paint by Bernadette. A common thread the artists share is the notion of water as essential, elemental, migratory. Water is flow and dispersion, it permeates every surface. It is memory, the protective feeling of floating in the womb, a bond of safety, freedom. The works unfold into layers, ripples, and waves. Embodying the seen and the unseen, an experiential trust in the gestation, experience and patience needed for a desirable outcome. They meditate on beauty and horror that exist side by side as we are all witnessing at this time. The multivalent narratives proposed in these sensuous idioms usher us in the now to experience our interconnections and reflect on what makes us strong in our fragility.

The percepts of the gallery offer a respite to the somatic hardship and endemic anxiety we are all undergoing. Our heritage is an invitation to spark joy and spread seeds of peace with our every breath for future generations. "Mami Wata's flow"- is an offering to perpetuate a sustainable loving transmission.

As a Vietnamese- Canadian visual artist Thanh Marie Bernadette Phan has evolved in many locations and with a multitude of influences that is in permanent flux, from her schooling in Montreal and Philadelphia to my immersion in the Kwakwaka'wakw community of Alert Bay, BC. Over the years, the art practice and daily life have become intertwined and affect every decision. Bernadette's intra-cultural background is present in how her use of traditional media of painting, drawing and weaving to articulate percepts of embodiment, vulnerability and active presence. It is a pursuit, a dialogue for propositions that evade answers and a source of “don’t know mind” which allow the works to communicate from the tipping point, this verge between familiarity and facing the unknown.

Valérie d. Walker is a Neo-Renaissance Artist, transmedia creator, alchemyst, Indigo Griot, Black Hawai’ian Latinex Japanese Scots, Femme Afro-Futurist time traveler. She holds Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) & Chado (tea ceremony) instructor level degrees with Urasenke-Kyoto, epigentic + lived Indigo knowledge. Walker landed on Gaia in Honolu’lu, and travelled the planet in space and time. Her artworks explore enviro-positivity with capaciousness interweaving natural dyeing, Shibori-Zomé (hand shaped resist), Katazomé (hand-cut stencil printing), Quotidian Femme-life actions, sensorially immersive fibre-based installations, solar-powered circuit-bending, Story-telling, Black Panther-esque activism and Guerilla-Grrrl radio. Valérie was welcomed to the unceded lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Sell With (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations by Chief Marilyn Gabriel.