Disorientations and Echo

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Patrick Cruz, “si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro,” 2021

canvas, acrylic, oil, twine, shells, rubber, polyurethane, steel, paper, clay, bamboo and ink, installation view in “Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo” at the Vancouver Art Gallery (courtesy of the artist, photo by Ian Lefebvre, VAG)

Shows at the Vancouver Art Gallery, for years, have reflected a kind of old guard Vancouverism, the fabric of the city represented and re-represented by the same group of artists. These guys, begrudgingly called the Vancouver School, plus a few other frequent players, have cast a long white shadow. 

Disorientations and Echo, on view until Jan. 2 as the second iteration of Vancouver Special, an occasional series that looks at contemporary art in the region, offers a new vision of old Vancouver, shining a different, more relevant light. (The first iteration, Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, opened in late 2016.) 

Aptly titled, this new exhibition demonstrates the disorientation that occurs when thought abruptly changes course. Featuring some 30 predominantly non-white artists, the echo comes from the abundance of voices to be heard. Can the subaltern speak? Here, they sound all at once.  

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Installation view of Charles Campbell, “Tree: Finding Accompong,” 2021

installation view in “Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo,” at the Vancouver Art Gallery (courtesy of the artist, photo by Scott Little)

Because of the exhibition’s expansive scale and the sensitive nature of the works, careful attention must be paid to recognize what is being expressed. There’s a sense that the curatorial collective may have been trying to do too much within the gallery’s small confines. I don’t see this as a fault of the five curators – Phanuel Antwi, Jenn Jackson, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Christian Vistan and Grant Arnold – but instead find it a result of the changing of the guard. If institutional programming has reflected the status quo, then efforts to bring about something different will naturally be dizzying, since corrections must come from all directions.  

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Lauren Brevner and James Harry, “Rememory,” 2021

acrylic, oil and copper leaf, installation view in “Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo,” at the Vancouver Art Gallery (courtesy of the artist, photo by Scott Little)

The viewer’s work comes in resisting the urge to link the art with a common thread. I see this as a decolonizing practice: to not run a monolithic narrative between the works, but to instead lend each work one’s patience, and so locate its quiet story. 

Simon Grefiel’s collaborative shrines throughout the gallery call the four directions and offer a cleansing place for reflection. Grefiel, born in and raised in the Philippines, is a multidisciplinary artist working through historic narratives and cultural practices from Southeast Asia. While larger rooms utilize space economically, the peril of the group show is that works tend to bleed into one another. Differently, the vestibules that house Grefiel’s altars of everyday objects and plant life puncture windows of meditative space. 

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Odera Igbokwe, “The Volcano,” 2021

oil and acrylic on board, in “Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo” at the Vancouver Art Gallery (courtesy of the artist, photo by Ian Lefebvre, VAG)

Odera Igbokwe’s illustrations imagine Black joy, alternative futurity and the force of transformation. Igbokwe relocated to Vancouver from New York City, by way of the Nigerian diaspora. The solitary figures in each painting stare out. In the confidence of their gaze, there’s an invitation to return the look. 

In the same room, Saskatchewan-born artist and academic Marika St. Rose Yeo’s fragile ceramics invite inspection of every precious crack and every loving act of mending, multiplied across the many vessels on display. Yeo’s work carries the trace of her process and offers an intimate consideration of the lasting effects of the diasporic experience on a body. 

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Marika St. Rose Yeo, “Shifting Conversation Series I, Vessel 1,” 2021

porcelain, underglaze and ink, in “Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo” at the Vancouver Art Gallery (courtesy of the artist, photo by Ian Lefebvre, VAG)

Manila-born, Vancouver-educated artist Patrick Cruz’s collaborative installation with Francis Cruz and Qian Cheng best suits the maximalist sensibilities of Disorientation and Echo. In si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro, Cruz creates a labyrinthian structure using painted fabric flags, disembodied feet and a radio drama told from the perspective of a mouse living in the artist’s studio. Cruz works with extremes of scale, enveloping viewers in the art by first intensifying their awareness and then drawing it to focus on the smallest details – right down to the mouse hole.

It’s impossible to speak of every work in this show, even as I found many of them so rich. A friend compared it to the city’s former Artropolis art fair, which combined unstructured curation with a sheer volume of work. The significance of the works in Disorientation and Echo only add to this overwhelming sensation. Step into the exhibition and follow Cruz’s tactic, allowing your awareness to first expand and then sharpen. ■  

Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo at the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 29, 2021 to Jan. 2, 2022. The show includes work by artists Jim Adams, Afuwa, Simranpreet Anand, Lacie Burning, Charles Campbell, Patrick Cruz with Francis Cruz and Qian Cheng, Gabi Dao with John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari, Chief Janice George and ‘Buddy’ Willard Joseph, Simon Grefiel, Whess Harman, James Harry and Lauren Brevner, Odera Igbokwe, Kwiigay iiwaans, Chief Floyd Joseph, Katie Kozak, Yaimel López Zaldívar, Betty Mulat and Zam Zam Warsame of NuZi Collective, Oraf, Manuel Axel Strain, Valérie d. Walker, MV Williams, Lam Wong, Marika St. Rose Yeo and Kenneth Yuen.

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