Step Mother Tongue, athut / Words Bounce
January 25 to March 31, 2019
Nanaimo Art Gallery
Joi T. Arcand, Patrick Cruz, Susan Hiller
curated by Jesse Birch
Sometimes words are dropped, and sometimes they are thrown; sometimes they bounce away, and sometimes they bounce back. athut / Words Bounce is an exhibition of painting, installation, photography, and video works by three artists who engage languages as they shift, transform, and even disappear, while impacting people and the cultures they belong to.
In this exhibition, Joi T. Arcand, Patrick Cruz, and Susan Hiller approach language as both a subject and a means of articulation, amplified through art. Some of the works in athut / Words Bounce see the generative possibilities of hybridized understandings and mistranslations, while others highlight the vital importance of direct language advocacy to cultural resurgence. - Jesse Birch
How far do you travel?
Diyan Achjadi, Patrick Cruz, Rolande Souliere, Erdem Taşdelen, Anna Torma
January – December, 2019m curated by Kimberly Philipps
Off-site on selected TransLink B-Line buses
Throughout 2019, the Contemporary Art Gallery is producing a major public art initiative in partnership with TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s transportation authority. Five Canadian artists —Diyan Achjadi, Patrick Cruz, Rolande Souliere, Erdem Taşdelen and Anna Torma—have been commissioned to graphically wrap the exterior of a series of articulated buses traveling on major routes in Metro Vancouver.
The nature of this project—public transit vehicles enveloped by visual imagery and traversing the space of the city—offers a lyrical opportunity to explore connections between images, meaning and movement. Buses and trains are not the only transit systems that we navigate in our everyday lives: visual images constantly transport ideas and meaning from one place to another. The English word commute is derived from the Latin commutare, which means to change or transform. Each of the five artists featured in this project has an artistic practice that is deeply attentive to the commute of visual language across time and space. - Kimberly Philipps