Artists

Featured artists: Stephanie Castonguay, liminal.synthesis, Lazarus Chan, Chen Yu-Jung

Children of indigenous and migrant communities often deal with the pressures of preserving the identities handed down to them while trying to find their own. Accompanying the privileges they have gained or that have been taken away, are the incomprehensible struggles of generations before. For some, intergenerational disconnect and loss of cultural connection forms an integral part of their subjectivity. For children of migrants, the feelings of alienation they experience in the places where they have become settlers on unceded indigenous lands is only amplified when visiting the places their families once called home.

In this exhibition, Joni Cheung invites interdisciplinary artists who reflect on the systems that construct identity as static and unchanging. As they wade through personal histories and experiences, the artists challenge narratives of cultural authenticity and consider their own layered identities and the inevitably fluid exchange between identity, place, and history. Using photography, video, sculpture, installation, and performance, these artists explore conversations around revolution, womanhood, family, belonging, and intergenerational and migratory identity experiences. Like generations of indigenous and migrant communities before them, these artists negotiate with their past and present selves, to expand and broaden what collective and individual identities can be.

The Programme

As part of the annual curatorial skills development mentorship programme, I know you are but what am I  is Centre A’s first exhibition in its new home at the Sun Wah Centre. The fifth Recent Graduates exhibition is curated by recent Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts graduate Joni Cheung and features works by Jessica Chu, Alanna Edwards, Aghigh Gougani and Andi Icaza-Largaespada, Candice Jee, Tse Chun Sing, and Olivia Chow.