Ed Pien

Cuban elders reflect on life and the passage of time.

by

Walking into Ed Pien’s exhibition, Present: Past/Future, on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario until next spring, I felt I was stepping back into the past. In the main room, which exits to a smaller screening room at the rear, one sees a visual cacophony of 20th-century wooden furniture – chairs, armoires and chests piled on top of each other as sculptures. Punctuated around the furniture are television-box monitors of similar vintage that play video interviews with readable captions. Set against a wall-length vinyl photographic backdrop of San Agustin, a suburb of Havana, the installation gives viewers the sense they have stepped into Cuba. 

Pien is known for his drawings of imaginary peoples and worlds. This Toronto exhibition shows his entry into documentary film and portrait photography. With this shift in medium comes a shift in focus: in his drawings he creates fictional representations, but with this work he presents real people and worlds. 

In 2014, Pien began meeting with 13 elderly people in San Agustin every four to six months to hear and record their stories. When I read a didactic panel on the wall, I am struck by the note that this ongoing agreement of regular meetings will end only once participants decide they no longer want to collaborate or if they die. Seven people are still participating.

The monitors play edited clips of these seniors sharing aspects of their lives. This becomes an opportunity for audiences to learn from older people, who are presented not as irrelevant, out of touch or boring, but as dynamic, playful and very much alive. They reflect on themes of time, age, and their earlier lives. 

Some are widows and widowers, and loss is still clearly held with a heaviness of heart. Yet the overall mood is lively, as if these are celebrations of particular lives and life more generally. The recorded reflections include advice they would give to their younger selves: sometimes this includes regrets, lessons learned or things they would do differently.

Working in a social practice or social-practice-adjacent way, as Pien does here, can present a host of challenges, both logistical and moral. Why is the artist working with this community, how, and to what effect? Who or what is benefiting? Pien is a Taiwanese-born Canadian artist in his sixties,  connecting with primarily Black and Cuban elders in their seventies and eighties. The show’s framing also mentions the difference in socioeconomic status between Pien and his collaborators. 

One exciting aspect of this exhibition is how Pien takes seriously the responsibility that comes with working with real people and provides insights into how other artists might do the same. In the show’s lead-up, he spent much time with these elders, sharing physical space and listening to them. The tender paradox sustained throughout this show is that these people have time for Pien even though – and especially because – they are nearing the ends of their lives. But there is a sense of futurity too, bringing fidelity to the show’s temporally tripartite title: they speak in the present of the past while often still planning for the future.

As he gets to know them across their differences, Pien represents aspects of their lives and their glimmering, complex personalities. His filmic editing techniques are on clear view, some with a jump-cut effect: these are video snapshots or vignettes woven together from multiple days of conversation. While one can spend time in the screening room viewing the longer film, as I did, the rest of the show prioritizes shorter, passing-by engagements for audiences moving through the gallery’s many exhibitions. Duration is still present conceptually: in photographs, hung as diptychs on the wall, Pien offers two photographs of the same person at different times.

This exhibition excels by showing how contemporary artists can engage with different communities, including forming relationships that do not end once the exhibition opens. Time, the thematic focus of this work, drives most of the questions Pien asks. It’s also what makes his process responsible and inspiring – he builds relationships, trust and understanding, and then respectfully represents someone else and an aspect of their life. ■ 

Ed Pien: Present: Past/Future at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from June 25, 2022 through to spring 2023.

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