Tracing Erasure considers how the intertwined processes of destruction and production affect perceptions of the past and the present, intervening in the political, the social, the personal, and the historical. In bringing together the work of five graduate students from Vancouver’s three graduate fine arts programs, this exhibition proudly responds to the University of British Columbia’s mandate to foster a learning environment for enriching academic exchange to serve a wider community. The included artists probe the intimate and dynamic processes of cultural mediation to ask how we give shape to our histories and how our histories shape us.
The process of tracing erasure is always imprecise and uncertain, never complete and unable to fulfil the promise of return. Yet, as the artists showcased in this exhibition demonstrate, through the complex layering of personal and cultural narratives, assemblages of memory, and histories, this process can be a transformative one, activating knowledge by addressing the recurrence of the past in the present. Though unique in their differing approaches, the artists in Tracing Erasure address a common thread of loss, renewal, and fundamental changing notions of home and identity. Their art proposes a self-reflexive negotiation of remembering and forgetting, upon which they may build diverging notions of belonging.
Tracing Erasure re-examines linear conceptions of time and place. Visitors to the exhibition are asked to consider how these preconceived notions may belie the complexities in the interactions between history, culture, and identity; as the included artworks layer temporalities, spatialities, and materialities, the interaction with the viewer becomes one more layer in the intricacies of the art.
Artists: Fadwa Bouziane, Maj Britt Jensen, Mandana Mansouri, Madiha Sikander, Emelina Soares
Co-curated by Laura Aguilera, Gregory Elgstrand, Schuyler Krogh, and Catherine Volmensky
Opening reception
Thursday, March 8, 2018
5 – 7 pm
AHVA Gallery
Audain Art Centre
6398 University Blvd.
Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday
12 – 4 pm
The exhibition is presented as part of the 41st annual AHVA Graduate Symposium in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory (AHVA) at the University of British Columbia.
We thank our donors for their generous contributions
Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies
Department of Anthropology
Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory
Department of Asian Studies
Faculty of Arts HSS Grant
Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Dean’s Office
Institute for European Studies
Liu Institute for Global Issues
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
Museum of Anthropology
Provost and Vice President Academic
School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
