Lani Maestro | No Pain Like This Body

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Lani Maestro, "No Pain Like This Body," 2010

site specific installation at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, 2010, Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Hua Jin

Manila-born Canadian artist Lani Maestro is known for her minimalist artworks that often respond to architectural environments and include the use of sound, neon, video, light and writing. In the Vancouver Art Gallery’s latest public art exhibit at Offsite, Maestro asks: What is the body’s capacity for pain, and whose body?

Maestro’s neon light installation No Pain Like This Body (2010/2022) presents a response to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Originally commissioned in 2010, the installation features a pair of text-based, ruby-red neon sculptures that spell out “No pain like this body” and “No body like this pain”. With the return of this installation to Vancouver, the artist hopes audiences find new meaning in the words that echo and call each other into question.

“‘No Pain Like This Body’—these are the words that first came to my head when I walked down Hastings Street in Vancouver… It has not gone away. It repeats itself. How can one ignore the particularity of that place? As much as I just want to think about making work without thinking of the people who inhabited that neighbourhood, these words seem to sum up the energy that I absorbed there.” -- Lani Maestro

Neon has frequently been the subject of civic controversy in Vancouver. In the 1950s through the 1970s, the fluorescent material was viewed both as a marker of excitement and growth and, conversely, as gaudy and distracting. Used today by local artists such as Paul Wong and Ken Lum, the material has found a home in this city. In Maestro’s exhibit, the sculptures literally and figuratively shine a light on one of Vancouver’s most historic and vulnerable neighbourhoods.

Taking on new resonance in a city altered by urban development and the COVID-19 pandemic, No Pain Like This Body returns to Vancouver on a larger scale to offer new meaning. Here, Maestro takes inspiration from her experience in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood and Harold Sonny Ladoo’s tragic novel titled, No Pain Like This Body, a title translated by the author from the Buddhist Dhammapada. Through this work, Maestro explores language, how it relates to the body and its ability to take on new meaning in various contexts.