We Cast Spells On The Mothers Of Our Daughters And Daughters Of Our Mothers
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Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art 205-268 Keefer Street (Sun Wah Centre), Vancouver, British Columbia V6A 1X5
Mitra Mahmoodi
Mitra Mahmoodi, "Aftabeh," 2018
earthenware clay, dimensions variable.
Centre A is pleased to reopen with its 2020 summer programming with the new exhibition We cast Spells on the Mothers of our Daughters and Daughters of our Mothers presented in the gallery and online.The exhibition, We cast spells on the Mothers of our Daughters and Daughters of our Mothers, brings together works by artists Yen-Chao Lin, Mitra Mahmoodi, Parvin Peivandi, Denisa Rahma, and Fiona Yujie Zhao. The exhibition centres on inherited cultural memories, magic, and rituals, and how they are complicated, and in turn reiterated in a contemporary context over time and through the diasporas.
It navigates diverse concepts and an array of cultural perspectives and locations, such as the filming of spaces that were once sacred and occupied by the Indigenous Amis sorcerers off the eastern coast of Taiwan, only to be disrupted and reconstituted by the colonization of the Spanish; the utilization, texturing and dissection of Persian carpets and weaving as a means of contemplating rituals of death, memory and analysis of the lives and reflections of women carpet weavers; the critiquing of themes of ritual, spirituality, and ostentation through calligraphy and ceramics in Iran. Furthermore, it explores themes of the occult, magic, and melancholy through staged photography and the play of iconography and traditional textiles from Jakarta as well as the speculation of inherited magic and spirituality that retains and transforms in the unconscious mind and body, through the medium of paint.To rethink and contextualize these abstract understandings of identity through inherited memory, the artists connect through cultural material, place, and objects, to reimagine it in terms of modern dialogues and new identities.
Curated by Hana Amani, Curatorial Skills Development Intern