Mami Wata’s Heritage

A swirling watery celebration of life.

by

STORIES

The swirling, shimmering works in Mami Wata’s Heritage, a two-person show at the Mónica Reyes Gallery in Vancouver, are intended as an homage to motherhood and creativity. Featuring work by Vancouver-based artists Bernadette Phan and Valérie d. Walker, the show also evokes the travels, travails and survival of myriad diasporas, who relentlessly pursue available paths, carrying seeds to unknown shores. But as suggested by its title, which evokes a water spirit venerated in Africa and amongst its diaspora, the main unifying element of this show, on view until June 11, is the motif of flowing water. Whether you prefer to quote Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu or martial arts master Bruce Lee, the message here is seemingly to be as water.

The artists are paired well in terms of their contrasting techniques and the materiality of their work. Cambodian-born Phan uses surface stippling, allowing the play of light and viewing angle to give the impression the paint is growing from the canvas, while Walker, who was born in Honolulu, presents digital collages that rely on technologically mediated processes to create a sense of depth. Both artists marshal repetition and meticulous ordering to convey a sense of natural flow reminiscent of fabrics or waves rippling in a breeze. 

Phan’s stippled paintings have evolved over the years from small concentric forms (some iterations are included in this show) to larger works with more variation, which increases their impact. Afloat and Peace Song are standouts. They feel like fabric that has been tossed into the air and left to settle before viewers. Both meditative and sensuous, they somehow seem to remain in motion. Nocturnal Dip and Download are moodier. In the former, it’s as though a blue net is cast over a dark sea, while the latter feels as if it’s draped across dark globe.

Walker’s works lack the immediate tactility of Phan’s paintings, yet they do play with texture and perspective. Her statement references Afrofuturism, which seems present in Elephants and Rhinoz in the Sky, which evokes traditional animal sculptures, their forms crafted from indigo-dyed fabrics. They seem to make their way across the sky above a desert plain.

Golden Waters reads as an aerial image of a delta at desert’s edge, with blue ribbons feeding into an indigo ocean. Indigo Waterflows is also concerned with the aqueous, but here they collide and fold back into one another like an eddy. Tournesol Phaz7 looks like a spread of indigo and tan fabric that has been cinched and pulled upward. It also resembles an aerial view, although the title’s use of the French word for sunflower also evokes something floral. It converses well with Phan’s stippled works. 

The artists propose the show as “a blues song of love, lament, hidden stories, social change.” The connections between music and visual art are always personal. I don’t hear the blues in relation to any of these pieces. I imagine a vaster scale ­­– a score of massed voices, awash in endless lush ambiences, shifting and slowing the perception of time. 

Like much recent art, both bodies of work seem birthed by a desire to come to terms with creating beauty amidst cascading global catastrophes, including yet another massive refugee crisis. These works can be read as an affirmation that creating art can carry us, like water, around whatever obstacles present themselves. 

Or, as the artists put it, they are spreading “seeds of peace.”

I think we can all appreciate that about now. ■

Bernadette Phan and Valérie d. Walker: Mami Wata’s Heritage at the Strathcona venue of the Mónica Reyes Gallery in Vancouver from May 14 to June 11, 2022.

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