Gu Xiong: Towards the Rivers
A4 Art Museum has followed and promoted the development of diverse histories and artistic experiments in contemporary art and culture in Southwestern China. The museum presented a series of solo exhibitions as artist case studies, my art practice cross cultures as a case study of “Personal Position in the Process of Globalization,” cashed up attention from the museum.
This catalogue was from my solo exhibition Gu Xiong: Towards the Rivers, a multimedia large solo exhibition at A4 Art Museum, Chengdu, China (from Dec. 19, 2020 – March 7, 2021). This show was focused on topics such as “Immigration and Identity,” including 5 installations, 3 videos, 6 large paintings, 60 photos and 2000 paper boats, 200 plaster salmon fishes and 10 poems on the gallery wall. My solo show was part of the A4 Art Museum Southwest Art Ecological Research Series on artists and exhibitions.
Marina Roy: Queuejumping
Taking encyclopedic form, Queuejumping eloquently unspools manifestations of capitalist, colonialist, agrologist, and scientist impulses–all within the context of the letter Q. From queens, queers, quadrupeds, and the Quran to quick, quiddity, and quotidian, artist and scholar Marina Roy masterfully presents research-based art writing, poetry, lists (Q without U: words for Scrabble), found images and piercing essays on humankind’s hunger to supersede the other in order to preference what Roy calls “the vertically-directed world.” Moving effortlessly between the macro and micro—from millions of years of organic decay to the the contemplation of contemporary art—Queuejumping is concerned with the origins of hegemonic forces, what is lost by winning, and what is gained by stepping out of line.
For more information: https://i-o.cc/books/queuejumping
Germaine Koh: Processes Curatorial Essay
Violetta Lapinski
Germaine Koh is what some people would call a “DIY” conceptual artist. Renowned for her ephemeral and abstract-driven artworks, her artistic practice over thirty-plus years continually evolves, her oeuvre is not finite; the works convert and adapt within contemporary environments reflecting the artist’s ongoing concerns with innovation and transformation. An experienced curator in her own right, Koh has worked extensively on a variety of diverse projects around Canada, the USA, Mexico, Europe, Asia and Australia. Koh’s latest exhibition, Processes (November 24, 2021–January 14, 2022) situates two ongoing works marked by changes under the climate of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Koh possesses an extraordinary generosity and her aptitude for making connections through her art practice has extended to public spaces, people, natural systems, and technology. As the 2021 Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia, in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, Koh has initiated and organized a variety of physically distanced art projects on campus, hosted workshops, taught graduate and undergraduate courses, conducted studio visits, and appeared as guest speaker. Under the tutelage of Professor Althea Thauberger for the course VISA 475: Exhibition Theory and Practice, Koh shared her practice with the student curators. We were fortunate to discuss and actively explore Koh’s extraordinary ongoing works while developing an intimate understanding of her creative contribution and aesthetic.
The exhibition Processes came about through this collaboration. Koh participated regularly in our course discussions, describing her ongoing artwork methodologies and cycles. As I listened to Koh, I proposed that a second Koh exhibition could be realized in tandem with the VISA 475 class of Koh’s The Haunting II exhibition, offering related opportunities for experiential learning in addition to her position as Koerner Artist in Residence at UBC. Koh’s ongoing, time-based art pieces (works that were initiated to continue ongoing interactions, processes, and iterations) were adaptable and ideally suited to be installed quickly and easily, offering opportunities for experiential learning. I proposed this thought to Professor Thauberger and Koh, with the intent to highlight the rare opportunity to show Koh’s artworks in Vancouver, while also re-activating the student-run exhibition space on campus, the Hatch Art Gallery. The gallery was sitting empty (since March 16, 2020, when UBC campus closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic). With both parties in agreement, I approached the Alma Mater Student Society (AMS), which oversees and operates the Hatch Art Gallery space, and the concept was approved.
The two works chosen for the Processes exhibition include Koh’s Accord of Wood, begun in 2013, and Fête, ongoing since 1997. Distinct yet interlinked, the two pieces convey characteristics of continuity, displaying aspects of two natural, organic living materials chopped in mid-growth, yet not at the end of life. The works specifically acknowledge processes of transformation, accumulation, archiving, and administration of commonplace materials and how they recirculate into new forms of artistic intervention as they transcend traditional conceptions of art. Processes highlights the artist’s keen observational skills referencing how existence shifts and changes over time. In this show, Koh brings together the resulting conditions experienced in a human life cycle (her own), in parallel with the non-human life cycle of pine trees. Historically measurable and categorized, these series of changes gesture to absent narratives, critical social commentary, the fragile environment, and Indigenous territories.
The voluminous work Accord of Wood, embarked upon in 2013, quietly acknowledges local and global environmental conditions and Indigenous title. These logs of infested mountain pine beetle were removed from their original forest location near Kamloops, British Columbia, part of the unceded ancestral territory of the Secwepemc people. An interpretive work, it traces the invisible processes of its movements from the forest to the controlled gallery environment through associative links. Accompanied by administrative agreements (accords) and transactional documents necessary for moving the wood, the logs have incurred multiple processes from forest to harvest, and then custom milled into lumber. Koh too embraces playfulness in her artworks. Naming the piece Accord of Wood, Koh alludes to the 4 x 4 x 8-foot cord of wood on display. The wood has been exhibited once before, in a different iteration, and with each physical move of the piece, Koh reconfigures the material, recycling the wood into a new artform. The wood exists regardless of interruptions, a controlled commodity at risk of expiration. Strapped together for this exhibition, the wood serves as benches to encourage gathering, dialogue, contemplation, and connections.
Fête, originally realized in 1997, is installed as a procession of exquisite garlands wrapped around three of the gallery walls. They are a growing collection of the artist’s own hair, cut at different intervals and hand-sewn into swags like tinsel. Rarely exhibited, Fête pays homage to the activation of a woman as she ages, not to shrink from but to glorify in this inexorable process. The thirteen swags harken rites of passage while recording past and present events in Koh’s life. The most recent hair sash is from 2021, consisting of Koh’s hair, cut and prepared only days before the exhibition opening. The individual swags of hair present differently and are ordered chronologically. The year of the cut is discreetly embroidered on satin ribbon fastened with binding to the left of the swag. Each swag evokes an occasion or communicates a story; the cut hair is a timeline representing the regeneration process that begins with the next haircut. The threadlike strands of hair collectively trace Koh’s journey of personal change and development through various lengths, widths, colours and textures. Fête seeks to reject the negative societal notion of the female aging process, declaring that the staged decorative hair wreaths are a powerful celebration.
Unexpected synergies developed during the exhibition which ran from November 24, 2021, to January 14, 2022. As the first in-person show to be exhibited in the Hatch Art Gallery since March 2020, Processes presented new forms of communication experimentation while practicing pandemic protocols. The exhibition functioned as a meeting place for pedagogy in hosting lectures, served as a platform for public discourse on decolonization, the environment, inclusivity and diversity, welcomed a Pacific Assistance Dog in training, and provided an immersive gallery experience to countless UBC students, faculty, and members of the public. The exhibition also welcomed gallery viewers to an opening event presenting the opportunity to directly engage with Germaine Koh in real time (remotely on a laptop) surrounded by her pieces Accord of Wood and Fête. As a whole, the exhibition Processes is characterized by an atmosphere of pensiveness, re-invention, and critical reflection, offering insights to understanding Indigenous issues in Accord of Wood while re-framing perspectives on aging in Fête.
Violetta Lapinski
Curator
Bachelor of Arts, Art History (2021)
Acknowledgements and Thanks
The University of British Columbia is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
I would like to thank Germaine Koh for graciously offering her works for the exhibition, and for her encouragement and incredible support; Professor Althea Thauberger, who introduced Germaine Koh to VISA 475, for providing her expertise, generous support and contributions at every turn; Greg Gibson, Undergraduate Advisor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, for his enthusiasm, endless support, professionalism and creative eye; and the UBC Alma Mater Society for allowing me the space and time, and for providing resources to pursue this exhibition in the AMS Hatch Art Gallery.
The Koerner Artist in Residence Program in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory is made possible by the generous support of the Koerner Foundation and a private BC-based foundation.
Sincere thanks to those who contributed to the realization of this exhibition:
Art History Students’ Association (AHSA)
Ece Asitanelioglu
Anna Be
Lauren Benson, AMS Vice President
Amelia Cheng, Graphic Designer
Maddy de Jager
Kirandeep Dhaliwal
Anneke Dresselhuis
Ben Du, AMS Associate Vice President, Administration
Zoë Eshan
Cole Evans, AMS President
Haya Faruqui
Josephine Lee
Francisc León Lozano Rivera, AMS Building Assistant Manager
Eric Lowe, AMS Senior Communications & Marketing Manager
Vince Markarian, AMS Building Operations Manager
Helena Mott
Joanne Pickford, AMS Administrative Guru Extraordinaire
Deb Pickman, Special Projects, UBC Arts & Culture District
Tatiana Povoroznyuk
Nancy Shen
Joe Salmon
Yasmine Semeniuk, AHSA President
Jasmina Simsone
Joshua Steinhauer
AJ Takhar
Anastasjia Tomic
UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory
VISA 475 class colleagues
Visual Art Students’ Association (VASA)
Maggie Wong, VASA President
It was truly a pleasure to work with such a dedicated group of people.
Dan Starling: Unsettled Histories
Vancouver-based artist Dan Starling’s Unsettled Histories takes as its starting point Rembrandt’s renowned work Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves: The Three Crosses (1653). Rembrandt had created five states of this print, with each version altered through either sketching directly on the plate or adjusting the level of ink left on the plate for printing. Starling, piqued by this experimental approach by one of Western art history’s most renowned figures, created 40 drypoint prints, working from the original to embellish and erase parts of the image, creating a shifting narrative through time on the hills outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Unsettled Histories uses printmaking to realign the timelessness of Rembrandt’s original with the timeliness of contemporary socio-political struggle in the settler-colonial context of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Western art history is typically presented as timeless and unchanging. By moving Rembrandt’s work through a process of erasure and superimposition, Starling aims to highlight the instability of occupation.
Starling, through his process, questions the legitimacy of colonial histories, prodding at the foundations of settler-occupied cultural narratives. Starling’s single copper plate carries within it a multitude of propositions, fictions, literary accounts, and imaginings.
This publication features 40 drypoint prints from Dan Starling’s Unsettled Histories series and texts by Jennifer Cane, Daniel Adleman, Sanem Güvenç, and the artist. It was published in conjunction with the exhibition Unsettled Histories at the Burnaby Art Gallery, which ran from February 4 – April 17, 2022.
For more information: https://artmetropole.com/shop/14890
For more information about the exhibition: https://www.burnaby.ca/recreation-and-arts/arts-and-culture-facilities/burnaby-art-gallery/exhibitions/dan-starling-unsettled-histories
2024-2025 AHVA TA Postings
ARTH TA Postings 2024W
VISA TA Postings 2024W
Application: Please upload copies of the following by 4:30 PM on Tuesday, 30 April 2024.
1)Cover letter indicating the course(s) you are applying for and preference;
2)Curriculum vitae, which includes a list of all Art History/Visual Art courses that you will have completed by Fall 2024.
-Tutorial times can range between 9:00 am – 6:30 pm
-Students must be in British Columbia by the start date of a TA assignment in order to hold the appointment
UBC hires on the basis of merit and is committed to employment equity. We encourage all qualified applicants to apply. Successful applicants will become members of the Teaching Assistant union, CUPE 2278. Assignment of positions is guided by the stipulations within the collective agreement between UBC and CUPE 2278.
MFA Alumna Krista Dragomer’s Collaborative Project Wins Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction
Congratulations to AHVA MFA alumna Krista Dragomer (2009) for her work on the collaborative project A Father’s Lullaby, which received the Prix Ars Electronica 2021 Award of Distinction in Digital Musics and Sound Art.
Krista Dragomer and digital composer Christian Gentry co-created the sound design for this multimedia site-responsive installation as part of a team led by filmmaker Rashin Fahandej. A Father’s Lullaby marks another artistic collaboration between Dragomer and Fahandej—for the 2009 Master of Fine Arts graduate exhibition, Interrobang, at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the pair co-created the video/sound work Sorkhab.
A Father’s Lullaby focuses on the role men play in raising children and the impacts of their absence when incarcerated. Manifesting in multiple formats, from an ongoing series of public interventions to immersive installations, community co-creation workshops, and a location-based participatory audio augmented reality platform, the work delves into racial inequalities in the criminal justice system in the United States.
A Father’s Lullaby has been shown at:
Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2021
SOMARTS, San Francisco, CA, 2021
Concord Art, Concord, MA, 2021
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, 2019
The Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, 2018
Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most prestigious media arts competition. Since 1987, the prizes are awarded to groundbreaking projects that revolve around questions of our digital society and incorporate innovative forms of technology and artistic expressions. Read more about Prix Ars Electronica here.
Krista Dragomer is an artist and independent educator. Her art and teaching practice explores bodies: human bodies, non-human bodies, how bodies perceive and are perceived, and how that perception affects relations internal and external. Her work is deeply interdisciplinary, moving between visual and sound art practices, and is informed by research into cultural history, human and non-human sense studies, speculative and feminist ecology, and multi-species research. She has worked in collaboration with experimental filmmakers, new media artists, musicians, and academics in the fields of religion, philosophy, and anthropology. Her work has been presented in a diverse range of platforms including academic conferences, art galleries and museums, science museums, concert venues, public parks, and alongside bio-hackers and eco-interventionists at underground, DIY, and artist-run spaces. She holds an MFA from the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, where she also worked extensively with the School of Music.
Website: http://www.kristadragomer.com/