Lucie Chan: How to be 57

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Lucie Chan, "How to Be 57," 2018

drawing and watercolour

Artist talk: 8 September 2022  at  12:00 PM (Zoom)

Oxygen Art Centre is thrilled to announce visual artist, Lucie Chan as artist-in-residence for the month of August. Chan was born in Guyana, and currently resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations otherwise known as Vancouver, BC where she maintains a multi-disciplinary visual art practice and teaches at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

While artist-in-residence, Chan will conduct research towards the creation of future work that explores the experiences of racialized violence. This work continues her interest in exploring race-related, immigrant experiences. The public are invited to visit Chan during her Open Studio sessions on 12 + 13 August 2022 from 1-3 PM. Volunteer participants are invited to engage with her in one-on-one interviews during scheduled sessions from 15 to 19 August 2022. In what Chan sees as a collaborative process, interviewees will be invited to draw, write, and make sound together. Interested participants can schedule an interview by emailing info@oxygenartcentre.org.

The artist will carry the stories gathered during the interviews into her practice, and the manifestation of new material. In considering the stories, Chan says, they “inspire, transform and give shape” to the development of the project. In this way her research and subsequent work become a visual conversation. Chan’s attentive listening to the stories of those she interviews forms a seminal part of her artistic practice. A practice that includes multi-layered drawings, photography, sculpture, text, audio, and video elements which she orchestrates into installations.

For Chan her interdisciplinary practice reflects the complexity of being human. Although a self-confessed shy person, Chan embraces what has been a “long career of interviewing strangers.” Chan goes on, stating “I am interested in these interactions when something is revealed that we don’t necessarily have every day like a sense of connection or intimacy.” For Chan this work is a way of honouring the individual who is often forgotten in the collective experience of being human, and of conjoining individuals through sharing stories around culture and identity.

The residency will then be followed by an exhibition of a previous body of work, How to Be 57 (2018), which includes drawings, text, and sculpture. The work is an example of a similar research and creation processes that Chan will employ during her residency.

In How to Be 57 the artist works intimately with two women who have radically opposing experiences with the police. One, a Dutch immigrant in France finds herself interrogated in her home despite her innocence. The other, an unarmed civil servant, suffers racialized violence when her apartment is mistakenly raided. The work considers dynamics of age and otherness and can be seen as a lens into systemic violence and injustice that are pervasive for diasporic communities in Canada.

How to Be 57 might be understood as a hypothetical guide to experiencing a precise moment of transformation in a stranger’s life, a reminder that living is an act of perpetual inscription. The work is a complex portrait, and a non-linear exploration at these common racialized narratives.

The public are invited to drop in during the Open Studios on  the 12th and 13th of August between the hours of 1:00 PM and 3:00 PM. Expressions of interest to take part in the interview process can be sent to info@oxygenartcentre.org by Wednesday, August 3, 2022 @ 5:00 PM PST. Please also share any specifics regarding your access needs or any questions.

Due to rising COVID cases in the province, we ask that all visitors to the space wear a mask during Chan's residency. Maximum capacity is limited to ten persons at a time. Please contact the gallery with any questions about your visit.