Diyan Achjadi, "Coming Soon! (3)," 2018
six-colour silkscreen on Kozuke paper, 12” x 17" (printed at the Emily Carr University Print Media Shop with the assistance of Tajliya Jamal; photo by Harry Armstrong)
Diyan Achjadi’s public art project couldn’t be better timed. Amidst the latest phase of frontier greed, it seems every corner of Vancouver has become a potential building site. With a housing market turbocharged by global capital, familiar places are being transformed at breakneck pace into luxury condos, typically for the investment class. Every week, we see telltale orange fencing going up around a different building, signalling the erasure of another chunk of urban heritage or industrial infrastructure.
Achjadi is a maker of beautiful prints. This project, funded by Vancouver’s public art program, will see her postering hoardings at construction sites each month over the coming year with note-perfect illustrations of pylons, construction netting and crude two-by-four structures. Her prints are left vulnerable to the cumulative effects of inclement weather and urban hustle.
“They are the result of long and labour-intensive processes,” says Achjadi. “There’s a lot of craft and care that’s gone into it and I’m putting them into spaces where I know they'll be destroyed by the elements. I hope it will provoke people to ask why somebody would do this.”
Achjadi, originally from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, and now an associate professor at Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art and Design, usually explores cross-cultural narratives through drawing, printmaking and animation. With such varied approaches, nothing is typical. But this work is set apart because it's her first public art focused on something very local.
Achjadi has lived in Hong Kong, London and Washington, D.C. She holds a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal. Due to her cosmopolitan background in cities that have experienced much change, she views rapid urban development without the dismay of many longtime Vancouver residents.
But she certainly has her eye on the greater context.
“It seems to be heading in the same direction as cities like San Francisco and New York, where so many people have been displaced through gentrification,” she says. “There’s a sense that there will only be a particular class who can afford to live in these spaces. But the work here isn’t commenting on that specifically. It’s asking the viewer to notice these small moments of change that might otherwise be missed.”
Diyan Achjadi, "Coming Soon! (4)," 2018
14-colour silkscreen on Kozuke paper, 25” x 16" (printed at the Emily Carr University Print Media Shop with the assistance of Tajliya Jamal; photo by Harry Armstrong)
While some might hope for more overtly oppositional work, a playful critique is subtly embedded in the project. For me, it’s tempting to view her prints as evidence markers at a crime scene. The act of flour-pasting them to plywood hoardings seems almost a ceremonial gesture or ritual anointment. Each installation effectively says: “We see you,” acknowledging in a direct and unmistakable way the first markers of a new laceration in the urban fabric.
As a city-funded project during the reconciliation era, support materials and online references note that Achjadi’s work is being placed on unceded First Nations’ territory. This acknowledgment prompts a deeper perspective. The earth heaves around us at different tempos. Change is inevitable – but the pace has varied. Over millennia, the land of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh was relatively stable. Only the last tiny sliver of recorded time, rocked by capitalism’s chaotic, unregulated market, has witnessed such absurdities as million-dollar “sky homes” and unfathomable rent-to-income ratios.
The project’s title – Coming Soon! – plays with the hype and anticipation of marketing language. It holds the promise of more, but more what? More construction and debris? More displacement and speculation? Or a crash? Spoiler alert: Achjadi’s images don’t turn into affordable living spaces as the months go by. Instead, we simply get more beautifully rendered images of pylons and fencing. She neatly orders and repeats them in interstitial sites where temporary borders remind us of the public costs of private space.
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Diyan Achjadi, "Coming Soon!," 2018
installation view at Cambie and 35th (Pennyfarthing), photo by Harry Armstrong
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Diyan Achjadi, "Coming Soon!," 2018
installation view at Railway and Jackson (Rendition), photo by Harry Armstrong
It’s interesting that Achjadi repurposes a form of popular street advertising, once the only affordable means of publicity for those of limited means. Postering has enjoyed a rich and varied tenure in Vancouver. I first noticed now highly collectable punk gig posters featuring bands like the Subhumans in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Later, Hollywood film companies began plastering hoardings with full-sized one-sheets, a case of big money muscling out the little guys as commercial interests sought street cred. Then that seemed to die out. In recent years, small-scale postering has made a comeback as a low-budget choice for all manner of events.
Developers may hope to signal bywords like exclusive, boutique or luxury with their hoardings, but Achjadi’s project is one of reclamation and reflection. Ironically, her work is at risk of being co-opted as penthouse décor by some enterprising designer. But, at the moment, it is true public art for the masses, presented at intersections where wealth and privilege meet anxiety and chaos. As hoardings rise in Vancouver over the coming year, so too will these new signifiers. ■
Coming Soon! is on view throughout Vancouver from September 2018 to September 2019. Visit comingsoon.construction/ for details.
