#AGAlive | Asian Heritage Month Panel

2022

Watch our May 27 panel discussion celebrating Asian Heritage Month with Roy Caussy, Gwenessa Lam and Marigold Santos, moderated by AGA Executive Director/Chief Curator Catherine Crowston.Watch our May 27 panel discussion celebrating Asian Heritage Month with Roy Caussy, Gwenessa Lam and Marigold Santos, moderated by AGA Executive Director/Chief Curator Catherine Crowston. …

Key moments

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Catherine Crowston
Catherine Crowston
2:15

Catherine Crowston

2:15

Roy Cossey
Roy Cossey
3:06

Roy Cossey

3:06

Marigold Santos
Marigold Santos
4:36

Marigold Santos

4:36

Aswang
Aswang
10:42

Aswang

10:42

Butterfly Sleeve
Butterfly Sleeve
15:48

Butterfly Sleeve

15:48

The Articulate Object
The Articulate Object
25:36

The Articulate Object

25:36

The Clay Cup Series
The Clay Cup Series
36:53

The Clay Cup Series

36:53

Mountain Club Feasts
Mountain Club Feasts
39:54

Mountain Club Feasts

39:54

Autogenerated Transcript from YouTube (if available)

Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript​.

2:05

good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for this special artist conversation organized as part of the archive of

2:12

awareness programming in recognition of asian heritage month my name is catherine crowston and i’m

2:17

the executive director and chief curator of the aga i would like to begin by acknowledging that we’re hosting this event from

2:23

edmonton i’m a swarachi waskahikin in treaty six territory and region four of the metis nation of

2:30

alberta we acknowledge this as the traditional ancestral home of the new hawk

2:35

anishinabe soto mitsutapi blackfoot nakota sioux dene and metis peoples and

2:42

acknowledge the many indigenous first nations and inward people who make alberta their home today

2:47

we recognize that this acknowledgement is just one small recognition of the work that we need to do

2:52

to address and reverse the ongoing impacts of colonization it’s my great pleasure to be able to

2:58

introduce the three artists panelists who are joining us today to share their work in this special conversation

3:04

born and raised in hamilton ontario roy cossey’s practice is an outcome of his semi-nomadic lifestyle

3:11

having established studios in hamilton vancouver medicine hat and halifax khasi conceptualizes his

3:17

journeying as the inheritance of his family’s history of immigration and diaspora

3:22

while allowing the geography and history of each place he inhabits to inform his practice

3:28

most recently causey spent four months living with his mom in hamilton where every sunday he learned to cook

3:33

meals that both he and his mother grew up eating casey has received various grants

3:38

including those from the national canada council for the arts and it’s exhibited both nationally and

3:44

internationally this summer he will be in part of a group exhibition we do not work alone curated by jesse

3:51

burch at the nanaimo art gallery roy cossey currently resides in halifax

3:56

nova scotia glenessa lamb is the visual artist and educator

4:01

lam received her bfa from the university of british columbia and an mfa from new york university

4:07

her work has been exhibited at the bronx museum of art the queen’s museum of art in new york the gallery to ucam and montreal and the

4:14

glenbaum museum she has been an artist in residence at the virginia center for the creative

4:19

arts skull hagen mcdonald colony yatto as well as the banff center

4:25

lam has taught at new york university the university of british columbia the alberta university of the arts and

4:31

is currently associate professor at emily carr university of arkansas in vancouver marigold santos was born in

4:38

the philippines and immigrated with her family to canada in 1988 she pursues an interdisciplinary art

4:45

practice involving drawn painted and printed works sculpture tattooing and sound

4:51

her work explores selfhood and identity that embraces multiplicity fragmentation and empowerment

4:58

as informed by experiences of movement and migration she holds a bfa from the university of

5:04

calgary and an mfa from concordia university as a recipient of grants from the county council for the

5:10

arts the alberta foundation for the arts and that concedes art it is lecture to quebec she continues to exhibit widely

5:17

across canada marigold maintains an active studio practice and resides in treaty 7

5:23

territory in mokinsus calgary before i turn things over to our guest

5:28

speakers just a few notes each of the artists will speak for about 10 to 15 minutes following which we will

5:33

have a moderated conversation and answer your questions please answer any questions you have

5:38

using the chat function i would also like to take this opportunity to thank epcor

5:44

who support aga online programming through their heart and soul fund as well as the support of the canada

5:49

council for the arts please join me now in welcoming marigold santos

6:01

hello everybody uh thank you for joining us today my name is marigold santos and

6:09

before i begin i just want to take uh this moment to let you know that i am presenting to

6:15

you from 2d7 territory and i would like to acknowledge the traditional territories of the people of

6:20

the 27 region in southern alberta which includes the blackfoot confederacy comprising of the sikhsica

6:26

pikani and kainai first nations as well as the satina first nation and estonia nakota

6:32

the city of calgary is also home to metis national of alberta region 3 and as i live and

6:39

work as a settler on this land i commit to practicing decolonization as a process of constant

6:44

and continuous listening and learning and acting with care responsibility and

6:50

gratitude so with that i’m going to begin and talk a little bit about

6:55

my most recent work as you can see here the title of the pieces that are grouped

7:01

together here is bini at which in tagalog means seeds and knots

7:14

so so so uh this is my first slide here this is pieces titled shroud anastomosis

7:22

and as uh catherine had said in my bio my work really deals with themes of

7:27

selfhoods that are empowered and that are fragmented

7:32

and multiple through a look at a diasporic experience where i

7:39

critically look at the heritage of my culture to try to understand my personal

7:46

experiences and where i come from and my roots and my ancestry and how they inform my identity today which is a multiple

7:53

and porous identity so my work takes on the form of

7:58

other worldly uh images so i borrow and are i reference folklore of my

8:05

heritage fables and sensorial memories of my own personal lived experience

8:13

and i take those and i reconfigure them and i reconceptualize them so this particular one uh refers to a

8:20

fable the origins of the pineapple fruit which is a really important fruit in the

8:27

philippines you know it’s its leaves um produce a fiber where traditional fabrics come from um

8:35

it’s a very particular flavor and the palette of philippine cuisine um but it’s not

8:42

necessarily native to the philippines and it’s actually introduced through colonization and so

8:48

um in this fable depending on who’s telling it and how you hear it it deals with a little girl who’s either

8:56

um losing her eyesight or she’s lazy and uh isn’t isn’t earnest and so

9:04

um a hex is kurt is put on her curse by her loved one and she disappears and

9:10

is reborn as a fruit with a hundred eyes and so

9:16

the fable really talks about obedience and earnestness and um you know following the rules and

9:22

and um here you can see it maybe not so well but uh in this particular image the figure

9:29

is wearing this sort of big hat that has a lot of eyeballs and it’s got the texture of a pineapple so

9:35

it’s not quite necessarily distinct um the foundations of what i’m working with

9:42

unless you you get to know it a little bit more um often in my imagery

9:47

you’ll see giant hats or big garments or objects that these figures are wearing

9:52

and they uh refer to the shroud that is an ongoing and continuous

9:58

sort of part of my visual vocabulary so here’s the next one here um

10:04

and so you can kind of see this sort of shroud element it takes on a different form but there is a continuity of visual

10:11

elements like the inkiness of the figure and this atmospheric landscape also the figure is unraveling and um

10:19

in this image vocabulary of mine the woven is to represent the repaired or a figure

10:26

that is being recreate recreated and through that woven through that

10:31

unraveling there creates strengthening and resilience so it’s a radical way of

10:37

looking at folklore and in this particular way this folklore that i talk about is a figure called an aswang and for

10:43

those who are familiar with my work will recognize this figure i mainly use it as a metaphor

10:50

for a diasporic experience in that this figure is has the ability to self-sever it

10:57

comes from a rich history and also comes from colonial violence so

11:02

what i do in my work is i really reconfigure that i invert it and i create new meaning through that

11:08

and this particular one the figure is dancing which relates to folk dance of my heritage and is holding a particular

11:15

fruit and this one are tamarind pods in tagalog and again tamarind is something that is

11:22

very important in terms of sensorial memory it’s a flavor profile that’s very distinct in

11:28

cuisine of the philippines

11:35

and this next one here you can see a severed hand that’s sort of like fluid and

11:41

amorphous again the imagery here refers back uh to that aswan character of the severing

11:47

of the self um and the characteristics of that and when i make these works what i’m

11:53

reflecting on is a way of trying to grasp at my heritage or my culture that’s very difficult to possess being

12:01

part of the diaspora most of our learning is presented in fragments so i

12:06

you know i don’t have the luxury of being immersed in my homeland and in that culture 24 7.

12:13

so what comes to me comes in fragments and it’s okay to embrace that process and whatever process that

12:19

that takes shape in um and so some of those those uh fragments that come to you

12:26

are through sensorial memories like taste or touch and smell and sight um and and even invented

12:33

memories that you kind of like uh try to invent in your in your mind

12:38

so here are these um these fruits are sprouting from these fingers uh it’s called tempus or a rose apple

12:46

um and the next slide here is very similar as well

12:51

this one here again features a severed hand that’s kind of fluid and

12:57

amorphous similar to the last one but this one is referring to a fragrance maybe a particular

13:02

particular smell of a roselle flower or type of our gardenia

13:08

it’s very distinct it has a very cute smell and it’s found in on wreaths

13:15

and garlands in many many many households in the philippines uh particularly catholic households

13:21

because these wreaths are used to adorn religious icons so um you know when when sort of tapping

13:29

into this smell i’m making these connections with my heritage with my homeland with my experience of my past

13:36

through this particular sensorial memory which is transportative and transformative in itself

13:42

and the fluidity of this image really speaks to this identity or a selfhood

13:48

that’s always constantly in flux and then process and is evolving and that in itself creates that

13:57

self-actualization through that reflection of critical thinking and questioning and remembering

14:08

and the last two slides i’m going to show you are ink drawings of mine that relate to tattoo practice so the subject matter

14:15

in these next two uh drawings have to do with my heritage again so they are

14:22

fragmented pieces um derived from my grader work so you might

14:27

recognize pieces in there uh textures from my painting something from my sculpture they all

14:33

deal with the same the the same concepts the same themes my tattoo practice is one of the same as

14:39

part of my studio practice as a whole these are ink on paper and ink on paper

14:46

obviously to me has a relationship to ink on skin very different but they’re cross-referential um

14:53

and here i’m dealing with fragments of experiences so you might see textures of the landscape of my heritage

14:59

you might see actual objects that then go to live on the skin of someone else so

15:05

in a way when i tattoo it’s a way for me to create conversation

15:12

and exchange and dialogue and it’s a way to share my culture and uh with another person where we have

15:19

this very you know intimate and reciprocal environment um so some things that you might see in

15:26

this flash this is what we call flash so it’s available for people to choose from and get tattooed uh with

15:33

or might be you know plants and objects animal life that’s related to my heritage and you

15:40

know that one shape there that’s kind of like a crescent or i guess it’s like a tombstone shape

15:46

um it’s a sleeve it’s called a butterfly sleeve on a traditional dress that you would

15:52

find in the philippines um called eterno and it’s just one sleeve and it

15:58

might look abstract to others but you know for some people who know what it is it’s it’s very iconic and they know what

16:04

that is and so when i create imagery like this it really provides a way for me to connect

16:11

with my dysport community and a way for us to have these ties

16:16

through the imagery through my reconceptualization of my themes through dialogue and in

16:24

essence a way for me to connect with my heritage and to keep my heritage alive in me as

16:29

i live and learn and evolve through through time so that’s a

16:35

very quick summary of my work um thank you so much for listening and i’m

16:41

gonna pass it on next to gwenessa thank you

16:56

hi everyone like the little jack in the box coming up here that was amazing thank

17:01

you so much marigold um just to start us off in those wonderful thoughts to um build on i have lots of things with

17:08

cool chat about and thank you catherine um michael and helen who are behind the scenes

17:13

doing their magic uh their wizards dre and i’m just gonna put my little reminder

17:19

here and of course rory i’m really excited just to be uh here with with all of you this afternoon um so i

17:26

am speaking to you from the traditional territories um the unseated territories of the muslim squamish and slave tooth nations

17:34

um and i have been thinking a lot about my relationship to this place

17:40

and the wisdom and resilience that very much resides in these lands and

17:47

i myself was born in vancouver but as a chinese racialized settler

17:53

i’ve been thinking about that what that means and my work has shifted to think about my family’s

17:59

migration here in terms of its relationships um relationships to

18:05

the lands where we are from and the relationships to the lands that we arrive

18:10

to i know my time here is is um with you is brief so i’m going to

18:15

quickly try to share um uh two uh artworks or just sort of two visor ways of thinking

18:22

that considers these connections between um different lands and cultural histories

18:29

um so in in leia especially i think in light of of current events

18:35

especially i particularly with with anti-racist conversations uh i’ve also been thinking a lot about

18:41

um ideas of visibility and legibility so that’s what i was thinking about when i titled this

18:47

you know are thinking through the idea of like writing the illegible um so what it means to be seen

18:55

uh but also to be understood and legibility and conversely eligibility are i i think

19:02

are interesting words to me because it both links and sets apart the act of seeing and the act of knowing

19:10

and and they don’t always coincide uh you can you can see a scrawled word or image clearly

19:17

without actually understanding it um however i want to i’ve been wanting to

19:23

explore the idea of the illegible or the unrecognizable not as a roadblock

19:29

per se but as a generative a prompt uh where our movement towards

19:35

a desire to understand can can open up a different way of thinking

19:40

and a little bit rusty here

19:46

okay um so i began considering i think ideas of

19:52

legibility and and um in an earlier body of work titled mongrel histories

19:58

and this was a series of drawings uh based on a collection of buildings these are

20:03

historical buildings known as the kai thing dulo and answer using the the cantonese

20:08

pronunciation and dulo are multi they’re these multi-story homes

20:14

built mostly in the early 1900s and uh they were spread out throughout

20:20

china mostly southern china um but the ones i was looking at were like located in kai bing

20:26

county and in guangdong the guangdong province and china uh and as so they you know appear very

20:33

much as towers and they’re built mostly to protect against theft and banditry but also some

20:39

you know from seasonal uh floods and click here so there’s the details on the

20:46

right and so i i first encountered these

20:54

towers in 2007 during a visit to my mother’s village which is in in the same county and what

21:01

i found unique was the mix of architectural styles as they were described as having

21:07

um like you’ve seen this one like uh actually not this one so much but like roman columns french windows which i think you

21:14

can see here and um islamic domes and i later discovered

21:19

that these features reflected the the places where where people where families and people had traveled

21:26

uh had traveled um and at that time because at that time there was much immigration to north america

21:33

south asia and australia where family members would would work you know when they would save up and and

21:40

was able to uh return and rebuild these

21:45

elaborate homes um so these drawings are i’ll explain a little bit or portions of

21:51

them um uh brought together and i’ll talk about that

21:56

here some detail so those are some of the features that i talked about

22:03

um however much of the ornamentation was focused on the um the tops of the towers you see the

22:11

the detail here and and frequently um sometimes they would display inscriptions referencing the heavens

22:19

longevity and wealth so it was very much an image or a building that was

22:24

expressing um success and power and and i was thinking about these

22:30

ideals in some way were in contrast to the reality and the hardship that the fam that um migrants had experienced

22:37

overseas like you know and it was only if they survived their labor um they were able to come back and

22:43

celebrate um these experiences um but so partly in homage partly to

22:50

acknowledge i think those unspoken unspoken hardships these drawings were created

22:56

very much i was thinking about marigold in terms of what you’re talking about the you know the breaking of things the fragmentation so also i was thinking

23:02

about that way of like how i was severing the tops of these powers and um conjoining and like joining them

23:10

back together to create these these free floating structures which is what you saw in the the larger

23:16

image previous to that okay click here

23:24

um and what was also really remarkable to me though was how um the buildings and the architecture

23:32

became a record of cultural interaction um and the sharing of ideas

23:37

and knowledge across you know distinct communities like through the where they had gone and come back um and

23:44

so here is one such building that exhibits and i’m going to zoom in like there’s a crescent moon i don’t

23:49

think it’s the most here reflecting the influence of um islamic architecture

23:54

you can see so i’m going to zoom in so this bit uh is here and so there’s like a little

24:01

detail like the tops have these um crescent moons um oh i’m sorry i just saw a comment

24:09

here the size of these works i don’t know when that popped it but the larger drawing the one the very first one you

24:16

saw was about like floor to ceiling so 120 inches i think

24:21

it’s over six you know 12 feet but these ones are smaller so i would say they would range like three

24:27

feet to yeah two to three feet um sorry about that um uh thank you for

24:33

that question um and uh oh yeah so here’s the detail

24:38

and so again i created this image like many years ago um you know after that trip of 2007 so 2014

24:45

i made this but but i think it it was interesting for me to revisit for this talk especially in

24:50

light of what was is happening with the uyghur population and many muslim minority groups further north and so

24:57

like to think about in the past there was more of an exchange and a community and and it’s unfortunate to think about

25:04

what’s happening now hopefully that will change um uh

25:10

let’s just see here oh yeah next slide and so this is um more recent and some of you may have

25:16

seen it uh really um uh

25:21

grateful to have shown this um body of work this is the second body of work i’ll briefly touch on it was shown last year

25:28

and and came down this year at the aga so i thought it would be great to revisit it with you here um and so this was uh

25:36

titled the articulate object and um uh can continue in several forms but uh

25:42

this body of work uh was it was part of the al alberta by another last year uh but it began

25:50

much earlier through seeds of conversations i had with colleagues about connections

25:56

between chinese and indigenous communities in north america and in these conversations

26:02

i came across this legend of fuson um and fusong

26:09

is a 7th century myth of that describes the the travels of a buddhist monk

26:16

named hoysan who was believed to have visited the coast of the americas in the the latter

26:23

part of the fifth century um fuson was a name given to the land

26:28

um where the monk had traveled so you know that would sort of be currently at the west coast of uh north

26:34

america and there’s there’s little historical and archaeological evidence of the monks

26:40

journey but amateur archaeologists have often found ancient chinese burns and coins washed up and

26:47

they wondered whether these could potentially be proof of those encounters um and so most of the objects uh

26:55

that were found were not historically significant but every so often when you know something does come up or

27:01

appears it’s interesting that that that miss sort of resurfaces along as well

27:07

and so i began thinking about it in creating this work and so partly in response to this myth

27:13

um i began to [Music] um

27:20

i began to i think look for uh similar yet to be identified or

27:26

misidentified objects um you know not necessarily just washed up but perhaps they were already

27:32

in current museum collections and i was thinking about uh again this idea of relationships so

27:37

what historical relationships could have could have existed um or could be imagined

27:43

um that could be embodied through these things that you know were were

27:48

mysteries to us in the in this collection so that was a detail of you know the left

27:54

wall of the uh the installation in the museum um and it focused on um the group of

28:02

drawings of photographs circulated or looked at like three case studies i had looked at a different

28:07

museum collections and um and so they’re represented by three little organic clusters which i’ll unpack and

28:15

so this is just the wall and uh so one sort of

28:20

central piece that that forms a cluster is a saturna uh island ceramic figure which

28:27

is what you see you know if you could see my mouse but it’s still in the far right cluster

28:32

and the second cluster circulates around uh focuses on this coin um

28:39

and then a gluteal stone lamp in the middle and then not so much like a cluster but

28:45

on its own is a ruby creek stone figure um on the left

28:50

um so they’re all sort of related to like the the west coast and in different collections um uh throughout the the

28:58

province but one is also in alaska um so again that’s just a view of the

29:03

drawings and on that there’s this sort of a mirrored or parallel grouping with the photographs on the the right

29:09

wall um so as i sort of mentioned this the central to each cluster is that key sort of

29:16

unidentified or yet to be identified um artifact or misidentified artifact

29:21

and surrounding them are i drew the artifacts that archaeological

29:28

archaeologi uh archaeological archaeological archaeologists sorry initially

29:35

uh had selected as potential links when trying to determine uh their

29:40

provenance so it’s almost like um and many of them are actually dead ends in terms of like the

29:46

potential things that they could be uh and didn’t lead to an ads per se so um the project

29:52

is is uh sort of like a visual index of the sort of possible trajectories an object could

29:58

take with you know literally trying to map out what these things could be in terms of their origins

30:05

um okay go okay and i’ll end off with this one

30:13

um and so this is a detail of one of the the sets of um

30:20

corresponding uh photographs but sort of gives you a better uh um image of of the the last the one set of

30:27

um like one case study which i’ll talk to you about um so these objects i think were

30:32

particular of particular interest to me as a story of misidentification

30:39

that comes to be corrected and rectified over time so on the left as i mentioned is in a

30:45

leutique stone lamp and it was about four it’s amazing how they date these things between 400

30:51

to 9 000 years old like just somewhere around there um and on the top is a chinese coin from

30:59

the ming dynasty and they are from the the same they’re from the same archaeological site

31:05

um in alaska and the stone lamp and coin like they’re both

31:11

currently in the collection of the alaska state museum in juneau and i have to really thank the staff there for helping me um

31:19

giving providing that very much the information i’m sharing with you today and according to their documents what

31:24

was interesting with these two objects is that the the presence of one object

31:29

led to the misidentification of the other um so they were found in proximity

31:35

proximity to one another on the same site they knew the coin was chinese but the stone lamp they weren’t quite sure about

31:41

and early documents mistakenly assumed it as like an asian stone lamp and they described the

31:47

central figure as as buddha like um and so now the museum

31:53

identifies it as a boutique and and it’s understood that um they clearly originated from

32:00

different regions but what’s interesting is we still don’t know exactly how the objects came to be

32:06

together so then there may have been a relationship in that the owner of the coin

32:11

was also in possession of the stone lamp or the coin came to the region through trade

32:18

uh if not directly through travel um and so what is really powerful to me

32:25

is is that the more i am learning about the relationship between these objects in relationship to their

32:31

lands i think it provokes me to think about my own my own origins and the the trans-pacific

32:37

pathways that led um to the coast salish territories where i currently reside

32:43

so my understanding is still wet uh illegible but i think moving towards something tangible um so thank you for that

32:51

uh for your patience with the these images and so now i’m going to turn it over

32:56

to roy here

33:09

hey everybody um i hope you can hear me um okay uh so first yeah that was thank you

33:15

for those fantastic presentations marigold and vanessa and um

33:20

and as well the introduction from catherine and um even just to be included um to be asked

33:25

to participate in this panel um and alongside gwenessa and marigold it’s just been

33:31

a real treat actually it was kind of a very nice thing and also thanks to helen and um

33:36

and michael for all their behind the scenes help so uh i’m just gonna kind of i think i might

33:42

have selected too many things to talk about in this time but we’ll just kind of make our way through and see how it works and uh

33:49

um and kind of just go from there so i’ll give you a little bit of background um i called my talk erratic as you can

33:55

see and they’ll kind of become a bit more they’ll become evidence later um and so

34:02

so my name is roy kosi i’m a first generation canadian i was born in hamilton and i was raised by immigrant parents

34:08

who obviously parents who uh came to canada in the mid 70s and my cultural background is mauritian

34:16

which is the island of mauritius in the south uh sorry in the indian ocean and uh

34:25

sorry just wait for that i don’t know if you can hear that emergency vehicle and um so and uh my family is also part of the

34:31

indian diaspora so uh my first ancestors to arrive in mauritius were indentured laborers who

34:37

were swept up in the which is kind of part of the british empire right so that kind of

34:44

has an effects uh us kind of plays out in my practice in the kind of mythology

34:50

of how i understand my family history and so kind of what does this mean right like how does this all play out so

34:56

eventually we get to hamilton my parents have kids my sister and i and uh you know and we look brown but you know

35:02

we say roti with a hard french r right so instead of saying roti we say hoti is right like all everything’s kind

35:08

of frenchified that way my parents spoke creole in the house to each other we spoke french as a family

35:14

together and so that’s kind of like some of the differences um and uh and then also you know it was really

35:20

because there’s not really many mauritians that leave the island it was kind of just this enclave of the four of us my dad my mom my sister and i

35:26

kind of existed together but fortunately i also grew up in this apartment building in hamilton called camelot towers

35:33

and it was full of immigrant and immigrant children right so uh that was kind of amazing because

35:39

then you had people from everywhere right from west africa from argentina um

35:45

or else you know korean background persian background gujarati like it was

35:50

kind of everything so we got this really kind of international kind of uh upbringing actually even

35:56

despite the fact that we’re growing up in this very kind of white hamilton

36:01

kind of culture environment let’s say right so um that was kind of something interesting which led to

36:08

this very kind of wonderful um like developing this ability or an

36:16

agility with learning to get to know people who are different than you learning to

36:21

have conversations with people who don’t share the same understandings or beliefs as you and as a kid i never really saw that as

36:28

anything special but then i you know as you grow up and you meet more people who had very different upbringings

36:33

um you realize that that was actually quite a unique thing so anyway so that’s that’s me right um and that will kind of play in

36:40

as i give this presentation so i’m going to kind of go backwards in time a bit and uh uh and then kind of lead up to

36:47

the beginning so uh or to the present sorry uh so this first project is from 2009

36:53

and it’s uh called the clay cup series and it was a collaboration with my friend maggie and took place in 2009 um in vancouver

37:01

at century which is also known as the vancouver international center for contemporary asian art

37:06

and so for this project um basically we’re heading outdoors this is

37:12

a shot of maggie carrying shovels and we’re going to dig up natural clay deposits to bring back to the gallery so this is basically

37:18

what we ended up with and with that clay then we end up creating all these tiny little

37:23

clay cups so if you’ve ever been to um just go back have you ever been to india and you know had chai in those

37:31

clay cups at train stations then that’s really where i got this was on one of those trips but you know it’s now kind

37:37

of repurposed right it’s like making its way into hamilton or into vancouver um

37:42

and it’s being made between these two friends and so uh as people walk into the gallery space

37:48

you can see we’ve set up this uh little artist studio with the the clay there in the background and

37:54

a work desk and a kick wheel and people walk into the space and we’re asked we asked them to take a clay

38:00

cup and to join us in a drink whatever that is and um and then when they’re done to

38:05

smash the cup on the ground and so you can see all these shards are uh

38:11

left uh you know just kind of are all the broken cups basically so um so the whole

38:18

exhibition is really this uh it’s like a dirt like a balance between uh between the labor of producing new

38:25

cups and the destructions of the fruit of that labor so what’s left is really just this gesture and because it’s a gesture

38:32

between two friends uh you know it’s really a gesture of friendship that’s kind of

38:37

portrayed as this gift for humanity and so these are our gifts right like they’re they’re it’s really immaterial

38:43

actually that kind of idea so the friendship and so that kind of you know that count comes out of

38:49

for me at least that’s important because of how i grew up right like i didn’t have relatives around me um i just had uh

38:55

those friends that i cobbled together uh immigrants or not who were um our children of immigrants or not who

39:02

were uh you know became our family because it was just like i said the four of us

39:08

in uh in hamilton right and so uh it kind of the other beautiful thing

39:13

about this project is kind of talking about friendship and finding this kind of belonging with this family

39:19

is that another beautiful thing that happens or for me it was beautiful was um ultimately when people are taking

39:25

a sip from these cups they’re actually they’re putting their lips to the earth so they’re kissing the earth every time they take a sip right and so that’s also

39:33

this kind of like you know you see it in movies and stuff like that or tv shows like people like they’re like so happy to be back home

39:39

they dropped their news and kissed the ground so you know there’s like a little bit of that in there which i thought was kind of

39:45

funny um anyway so this next project is also from 2009 so you know we’re i’m talking about some

39:50

old stuff here um and uh it’s called uh mountain club feasts and so

39:56

mountain club is a collective that was formed with me and two friends it was myself maggie and ian and lasted basically that

40:03

summer but basically the idea of um the idea of feasts of mountain club

40:10

feast is to create a platform for people to gather and uh i built this uh

40:16

picnic table it’s like one long picnic picnic table it’s 37 feet long and it’s just an opportunity for people

40:22

to gather right and so we we made food we brought food we brought desserts and we kind of allowed this kind of

40:29

beautiful gesture to um to be available

40:35

for people to gather and that kind of again kind of comes back to that um how i put that

40:43

that influence of immigrants that i have had of like my parents generation

40:49

and how and their immigrant friends and then their kids and how we would always gather and it would always be kind of like this

40:56

not an imposition on each other but you know my mom would tell stories of how you know sometimes two carloads full

41:02

of people would just show up um and like new immigrant friends they made and they would just have to host

41:07

them and how wonderful it was like there was so much camaraderie and so much joy and it was such a fun kind of wonderful time and um and as

41:15

a kid i remember those two and you’re just like okay this is great i just have a bunch of new friends like it’s play time and you know that was kind of my

41:22

family again like i’m talking about so this these kind of ideas kind of keep

41:27

slipping in which is trying to generate your own community your own friendship and so

41:32

in a way these people who gathered are a temporary kind of community let’s say right so

41:39

um yeah and here’s just a couple more shots of the gathering i should get more on top

41:45

of clicking the slides so uh this next project is

41:51

called erratic it’s from 2015 and we kind of shift gears here right so now i’m kind of

41:57

leaving behind these actions and um just existing solo basically right so this was like

42:02

during my master’s program so um and so erratic is actually named

42:09

after the stones that are carried by glaciers during the last ice age and as those

42:15

glaciers travel across the landscape they end up depositing uh these stones

42:21

just randomly throughout right and and also as the glaciers are traversing the landscape they’re

42:27

altering the landscape entirely right so uh when you alter the landscape you alter the culture as well because you

42:33

create new foreign fauna and um and and you’re leaving behind these

42:38

like like these aliens these stones are called aliens they’re called erratics are so erratic is the name of

42:44

those stones i don’t know if i made that clear but um yeah they’re these alien stones and so um

42:50

that kind of was this beautiful uh kind of um

42:55

analogy i could say for my family history of that diaspora right of just uh like my my ancestors getting swept up

43:02

by the british empire as indentured laborers and then ending up in um in mauritius

43:08

and being fully severed ties thai’s fully separated from india like we don’t even really know where they came from

43:14

and so uh they just had to create a whole new culture a whole new um uh

43:22

home actually right and so and then and then oddly enough that’s what my parents grow up with right and

43:28

that becomes their culture and then they bring that to hamilton and then we grow up my sister and i

43:34

in with that in the house so that becomes our culture so now we get all this removal right and so you really kind of start losing this

43:41

sense of um your origin that anchor that you find so many people who have like generations in

43:47

one place they really have that rootedness right so um so anyways just to i i should go

43:53

through what this project is about so um what we’re looking at here is a seven inch record um that i produced for this

44:01

project and i also produced this wood bat so it’s just like a regular wood bat

44:06

that i turned on lathe um and with the bat i would go outside um and i would just pick up a rocks and

44:13

i would hit those rocks and um and so the project on one level is about displacements because i am

44:19

displacing those rocks with this bat and this image here is actually one of the locations where i was hitting rocks

44:26

and and that’s my bat on an erratic right so and this is in left bridge um and so

44:34

um so yes so there is this aspect of displacement but then also there’s all

44:41

um there’s through the action of hitting the rocks with the bat you create this

44:46

very loud sound which ends up kind of carrying across the landscape and then echoing back to you and so

44:52

you create this call and response actually right so you’re this solitary lonely figure in the landscape hitting

44:57

these rocks you know feeling so untethered because you know your family history is so so uh kind of complex let’s say

45:06

and then so unclear and then you also have you know i’m i’m in southern alberta all of a sudden uh and so you feel very

45:14

kind of unrooted as again as i was saying and so this idea of like finding yourself in

45:19

the landscape that con response through this action became a really important thing and um and so uh

45:28

and so yeah from with that audio uh i then created that seven-inch record

45:33

and then i also produced this record this folded poster that was included inside the record jacket and so

45:40

you have the album front and back and you can say it says recorded in uh

45:47

recorded on location at cottonwood park and a couple other places and um yeah and so then

45:54

um kind of going back to the idea of the sound you have this beautiful kind of

46:02

sense of um i guess well actually sorry i’ll go back for a second so

46:07

with that echo you end up kind of you kind of creating this almost sonar that kind of comes

46:13

back to you right like that sound traveling across the landscape is picking up every little bit of information and it’s also picking up you the hitter

46:20

me right and so and then when that call comes back to you it’s bringing that information back and so even

46:26

subconsciously it’s this kind of beautiful um kind of identifying with

46:33

identifying yourself within a place which um for people with my kind of family

46:38

history becomes because it’s so lacking it becomes this important

46:44

thing to try to grasp and i find that personally some people either dive right into it trying to like root themselves

46:50

like very much with their own family and kind of sitting down roots that way and other people have just gone

46:57

completely the opposite and they come they exist that were completely unrooted life i guess you could say um

47:03

and so the other thing about this project is that uh the act of hitting rocks was also a reflection of that erratic

47:09

and entropic displacement right so as i kind of mentioned before so

47:15

um yeah you can see like various ways that this work or sorry that my background is

47:21

coming into um it’s not so much it’s not necessarily that i’m trying to make work about being

47:28

mauritian or that i’m not making work about being like having south asian roots or history

47:35

right but it’s really about the experience of growing up first generation in canada um with the

47:41

cultural background that my parents brought with them to hamilton and then kind of all that

47:48

blending that ends up happening right and um and like i mentioned before with that

47:54

um early age right you have this kind of real internationalism right you’re really meeting a lot of

47:59

um other other immigrants from various countries and so you kind of

48:05

build this kind of um i don’t know i guess you could say love for humanity or something like that

48:11

right so this brings me to my last project which is uh the newest project that i’ve been

48:17

working or that i made um this is from 2020 uh this is shown at the aga which is curated and it’s

48:23

created by lindsey sharman and it’s called the king is dead and so uh it’s a slipcast porcelain

48:30

that’s like on these wood slats and everything and um and the idea for erratic was that uh

48:39

it’s basically it’s about witnessing a shift right so the baby boomers are ending as a generation

48:44

as a majority voting block and so it’s about putting into perspective the prior

48:49

like trying to mark a moment in time saying that all that’s

48:56

um like all the work that the baby boomers

49:03

put in place which can sometimes feel so self satisfying self

49:10

self fulfilling self not fulfilling but um uh not really about building community

49:16

or building healthy structures or trying to prioritize health over economy you know uh now is a time to be able to

49:22

start to undo a lot of that and that’s kind of the importance of marking time right is that you can make

49:28

something graspable you can say that um that uh that

49:34

era is over let’s try to build something better and and again the reason or the way i see my

49:39

background fitting into this so i’m moving really fast in these images is is um is because of that background of

49:48

that agility of learning to get to know people from so many different cultures so many different histories and

49:54

uh and thinking well you know i honestly do think that we can do better we can kind of shore up our social structures

50:01

social infrastructures like healthcare and you know universe universal basic income

50:06

is like another way to go about that too because it’s not really about representation but i think it’s more about redistribution right like

50:13

redistribution of resources and of economic uh and wealth as well and um

50:22

and that i guess i’ll kind of wrap it up right here but um i would say that that is um again

50:30

a priority in my life because of the the background or the experiences that i

50:37

had growing up as a kid and that’s how they started playing into my work so um i’ll leave it there and

50:44

i will uh pass this on to catherine i guess is the next one to come back on and say thank you very much

50:51

again and it’s been wonderful to be a part of this so okay thank you

50:56

stay on roy don’t go okay hi everybody um i think at this point

51:02

what i’d like to do is invite marigold and guanesa to come back on

51:09

and then we’ll have a kind of moderated conversation and answer any of the questions that have come up in the chat hi everybody thank

51:16

you so much that was great it was a wonderful way to kind get an introduction to each of your work

51:23

i just wanted to start off as i mentioned in the introduction um may of course is asian heritage month

51:30

in canada and it’s a month intended to recognize the contributions of canadians of asian descent

51:35

and i think by extension is thus necessarily also about the diasporic experience

51:41

which i think is just as important to each of your practices as your heritage is and i think it’s also important for us

51:47

to note that the diasporic experience is often tied to histories of colonization

51:53

so and i know that has come up uh in conversations i think initially in marigold and

51:58

and with roy but the one thing i’m struck by is all of your works seem to be pushing

52:04

towards a rediscovery or trying to express histories in places that you have moved

52:10

away from or have been separated from you a loss and there’s also a sense of a loss or

52:16

uncertainty of origin uh and in some cases it comes up with a question of in

52:21

your quest vanessa where are these things from and and who made them and how did they come to be together

52:27

so i’m curious to know from each of you if whether you think your work isn’t an attempt to express a sense of

52:33

this uncertainty or whether you think it’s an attempt to find some uh solidity or to create uh some kind of

52:40

solid meaning in some way so that’s a open question for everybody

52:50

um personally i i maybe i’ll just jump in um i i feel that uh it’s really like

52:57

i well so one thing that this pandemic has really shown us is that there’s so many craps that people can fall

53:02

through so many aspects where you can just um be too precarious let’s say like

53:08

you’ve been exist precariously and then now there’s a lack of support all of a sudden and so

53:13

for me it really kind of comes back into that right it’s about it’s not necessarily about trying to shore that up to become

53:20

more secure for myself but about expressing but about understanding just how precarious

53:25

precarious can feel i guess i don’t know if that makes sense actually but um but then you’re like okay well what

53:32

are ways that we can go about fixing that and personally i i start seeing it as a living wage for everybody all that

53:38

kind of stuff right so right the message is constantly in there but um that’s me so i’ll kind of turn it over to anybody

53:44

else yeah i know i can add to that too um

53:50

that’s a great question and roy yeah i’m glad how you opened it up in that sense and

53:56

even it and just um and thinking about that precarity um and i was just also thinking about

54:03

even like the words and the ways in which both of you had brought it in your works like marigold

54:08

had said like the i wrote these down because it really resonated with the porousness and then the weave and then

54:15

um and this idea of an exchange also in roy and your work too so i i feel like

54:21

for myself it’s um there are moments where i want to i think make things solidify but in a way i feel

54:29

like that i can’t and in a way that i think the strength and the agency is almost like

54:35

both of the images that you that you’ve presented of um how do we create not only an image but

54:42

an actual like roy like how you talk about in terms of like the the actual way of living through it

54:49

of something that um that has to be flexible like i think if anything the things

54:54

i feel like i’ve learned especially in the then what’s going on with with covid and the pandemic is is um

55:01

things can’t be like solid there has to be a way in which things are are flexible and i think both of you

55:08

and and this is something i’m trying to think through in in the way with our backgrounds and the way we’re trying to navigate the

55:14

difficulties of of who we are as something that could be made a strength but not

55:21

one that is like i don’t know the word of like yeah like of something concrete is so

55:27

um difficult um anyways i’ll stop there

55:34

um yeah that’s a great question i think for me when i’m making my work it’s not so much about making anything

55:40

solid for me it’s more about maybe

55:45

um becoming comfortable and creating reassurances with

55:52

the uncertainty and the sort of fluidity of it all

55:57

and that embracing some of that nuance embracing the like unsolidity can actually be

56:05

a source of strength and um can be something that can be celebrated

56:12

that can be a vulnerability or a weakness

56:19

and that you know it sort of gives an opening to rebuild

56:26

an opening to repair to reconsider so i think all of that

56:33

are just maybe opportunities to reconfigure for yourself and for like a

56:40

greater community how uh how you want to think of things and uh

56:45

yeah recreate imagine um actually like i’m sorry i have this

56:53

quote that i came across uh before i was like when i was working on this instance but it kind of relates

56:58

to what both of you guys and marigold are kind of mentioning and to your question as well

57:03

but i’m just going to read the quote it’s really short but it’s what is the stress of diversity can it

57:09

be overcome so that more people can feel welcome and thrive in these environments of little diversity and that is that kind of

57:16

precarity in a sense right like if you like the more you try to once you open up create a more diverse culture

57:23

you then you invariably do end up closing it to a different group of people it’s like it’s all it’s there’s this

57:30

like the way society is structured there’s always going to be someone at the bottom end it’s really hard not to at this in this

57:36

structure and so these are kind of questions i think that we’re all kind of approaching or talking about is is then how do those

57:45

um how can we have diversity at a core let’s say

57:50

rather than as like as this um that then restructures how we deal with each other

57:55

our government structures our health and educational structures so that it’s not about inclusion anymore

58:02

because it’s just it is what it is now right and um and then from there you

58:09

um i don’t know well i guess yeah anyways i just wanted to share that quote like how can you

58:15

welcome people and thrive in these environments a little diversity right so i’m interested brian that concept of

58:22

diversity with respect to actually all of the all three of your work because i think if you think back

58:28

marigold spoke about fragmentation and vanessa spoke about the concept of the

58:33

hmong girl and you spoke about the erratic and i think that those to me speak not just of diversity

58:40

but kind of elements of hybridization and maybe hybridization as a kind of base state makes more sense for us in

58:46

the world than one of kind of certainty or uniformity or something like that so

58:51

i just wondered maybe if you want to speak a little bit about ideas of hybridization or of that

58:57

idea of um diversity within within one thing i suppose as how that

59:03

manifests in your work

59:09

i think maybe i’ll i’ll start with that um you know the way that i i use

59:16

folklore in my work to talk about multiplicity of self is a way of speaking about that

59:22

hybridity is that you know being able to embrace um

59:27

multiple versions of yourself and and being able to hold different tensions at the same time

59:34

and having that be something that is empowering rather than something that is debilitating um and i think that

59:43

you know as a poc often times

59:48

we do so much labor we’re constantly code switching depending on our environment and i find

59:56

that when i was initially creating my work that that was what was in my thoughts was

1:00:02

that i feel i have to be such a multiple person and it’s not one way or another it’s not

1:00:08

necessarily good or bad it’s not a binary thing it’s a it’s a thing in the world that we live in and

1:00:14

that we are constantly evolving through and it’s not anything that

1:00:21

i fault myself for um and that i find disingenuous i find it’s a survival

1:00:29

and it’s a way of being um and it will change you know i feel like holding multiple

1:00:35

tensions holding multiple um multiplicity in oneself is is an important act

1:00:43

for me and it’s an act of resilience it’s also an act of protest um

1:00:50

and i think it’s just important you know for me to remember that

1:00:58

you know and i can build on that too um i mean i think for me too it’s also yeah

1:01:04

the idea is like the the the holding together the multiplicity it’s a great um way of thinking about it

1:01:11

too and i guess for me i really thought it i think for me hybridization has changed

1:01:17

in the idea of like living in those tensions like instead of before i think if we look at

1:01:23

like the way for me anyways the things have involved it was you know the the belief of having things fit

1:01:30

together like they no longer can i think that model for me has like broken it’s it’s about those fissures but now

1:01:37

like how do how do you build a net of difference um like thinking about not a

1:01:44

um not only a coexistence but to be able to realize that those parts that are different will be in

1:01:51

tension and it’s difficult and it’s not going to be um

1:01:57

harmonious but but that but they they need to coexist so there’s that tension point in it um yeah

1:02:06

so the multi the multi-nodal yeah um yeah so i as

1:02:14

you as catherine has mentioned like yeah so with the reference of the erratics in my work right it’s really kind of

1:02:19

talking to this like the this like the history of indentured labor right

1:02:24

and there’s something so um unequal in that where you can just kind of take somebody and displace them and

1:02:32

then tell them to work there and then just kind of keep them in servitude for such a almost almost indefinite amount of time

1:02:38

right it’s like you know like the contract keeps getting prolonged right but um

1:02:43

but um so for me this kind of um yeah i guess like this idea of the

1:02:50

hybridity or the diversity is um and how that plays into that history

1:02:56

is um is that personally i find that it’s very difficult or

1:03:01

it’s as a society it’s extremely challenging to try to include everybody at the same

1:03:09

level let’s say right it’s like there’s it’s there’s always even like when you think about

1:03:14

uh like a capitalization rate which is like trying to get people to perform at their at their best

1:03:19

is what that means um it can’t do that for everybody there’s always there’s always going to be somebody who ends up

1:03:25

not quite getting that benefit and so um and so it always comes back to

1:03:31

this for me how can you make people less precarious which is like your last your last question as well right and so

1:03:37

um and so it it comes back into the structure of our of our government of our

1:03:42

institutions and um and how we prioritize like again right

1:03:48

like we’ve been learning over the last year that we can’t just prioritize economy we actually have to prioritize

1:03:54

health of citizenship right and and so that becomes how you start to tackle

1:04:01

hybridity and diversity you just make everybody able to um

1:04:06

support themselves to take care of themselves to feel some kind of sense of belonging through not having to struggle harder

1:04:13

than the next person let’s say right i mean obviously this is always going to be these challenges that are unique to each

1:04:19

set of people but that kind of is how it comes back to it for me and again this is

1:04:24

partially or in part has to do with that history of indentured labor and you know you’re just like oh they could just be snatched

1:04:30

up and not really snatched but you know i mean like it’s not it’s not a fair deal it’s not a fair

1:04:36

shake right and so you know that structure that i mean that still exists

1:04:41

in our i mean that’s the minimum wage job in some ways you know what i mean like it still is present in our society now and so

1:04:48

um how can we how can you know maybe hybridity hybridity and

1:04:54

diversity looks different moving forward than what has as our generation as we know it

1:05:00

presently right um but i think it starts with the structures that we implement like the redistribution

1:05:07

i should say uh i think i’m just going to ask maybe

1:05:14

one more question i think we have a bit of time i think that the what i’m finding fascinating as well is you know particularly right when

1:05:21

you’re talking about the history of indentured labor and and that that’s impact on your family

1:05:27

history um and in the work that you are all making there’s different senses of history that are arising or different

1:05:33

senses of memory of you know of of um you know i think marigold you talked about sensorial memory

1:05:40

and we also spoke and you know the the memory that comes from from smell and that kind of memory we

1:05:46

also talked about you know family history in them and the memory of family uh as well as

1:05:51

kind of history and memory that’s embedded in these objects when essa that you’ve been working with that are you know

1:05:56

centuries and centuries old so i guess for me there’s a really fascinating uh kind of play between history and

1:06:04

memory in all of your work as well i don’t know if that’s a statement or a

1:06:11

question but

1:06:16

oh go ahead marigold i’m just turning my audio on um yeah just to quickly add to that

1:06:23

um for sure when i think about you know my own personal lived experience which

1:06:28

is the jumping off point for my work um it tackles bigger issues um where i’m investigating

1:06:36

and learning for myself the history of my culture the history of the philippines as a

1:06:42

colonized nation and it’s you know identity that has formed over time and evolved over time

1:06:50

through you know violence and through non-consent and so

1:06:57

you know my work tackles um these very big uh and important concepts

1:07:04

through distilling it into looking at the folklore that’s come out of that and

1:07:10

you know the out of colonial violence and and how folklore is used as a way to

1:07:17

create order in oneself and to give meaning in an understandable way to sort of pass it down for for good or

1:07:24

for for better for worse um and how we kind of survive through

1:07:30

those moments um through that that history that is so inherent and you know the philippines is

1:07:35

a super rich history of colonial violence over

1:07:43

hundreds of years um and and understanding what that had done um to

1:07:50

indigenous populations in that archipelago so i feel like looking at

1:07:57

you know my own lived experience which is like you know microcosm and then the macrocosm of

1:08:03

where it comes from and how that informs my identity and forms sort of like a a way of understanding

1:08:10

um uh people of my of similar histories and also within similar regions it’s just a way

1:08:17

of of learning and connecting and and then also like being critical of it and understanding where to go from there

1:08:23

you know like not just learning it and and i’m learning it day by day but then what to do with it and where to

1:08:29

go with that and how that will inform your choices going forward in in your contemporary

1:08:35

society today miracle i’m gonna ask um a question there was one question from the audience

1:08:41

that i think was addressed specifically to you and i think it ties very much back to what you’re saying at the moment and the question was there’s a kind of

1:08:48

cool juxtaposition between vibrant life and fluid decay is death intended to be

1:08:54

part of the motif in your work and i think the question then comes back to me about the

1:09:00

how does that question of death perhaps relate to the the connection to colonial violence

1:09:06

yeah for sure and i think cycles are really important for me to consider in my work so if we’re thinking about like

1:09:11

death and life and rebirth i take those as like very conceptual ways of looking at

1:09:17

my work and not just literal ways of looking at my work so of course you know when we think

1:09:23

about the folklore that and and if people are interested they can they can um maybe get in touch with me

1:09:29

or look at the work of uh that i do in detail but folklore that i specifically deal with

1:09:36

deals with um violence of of like pillars of society you know

1:09:41

there’s a lot of death that’s involved in that but out of the death comes the resilience and kind of like a re

1:09:46

recreation of of like a new sense of self or a new kind of society

1:09:51

i’m not saying that like the colonial society that comes out of it but like the you know the different um

1:09:59

the pillars of indigenous society like the babylon the shamans who were persecuted under colonial rule

1:10:06

and then uh became you know sort of like marginalized but very powerful people

1:10:12

that still survived through through that death and destruction uh to carry on to today

1:10:18

um and so yeah i feel like there’s always going to be that that bit

1:10:24

of um that cyclicality that i address if you want to call it like you know um

1:10:32

death and birth or creation and destruction but yeah i feel like and it just ties into i

1:10:38

just saw on the chat glenn had said something about the tamarind being a bit both bitter and sweet and i think that that

1:10:44

really relates to for sure the colonial experience of what had happened in in uh in my

1:10:51

heritage in my country great roy or aquinas i don’t know if you want to

1:10:58

answer my previous question or if if you lost track of it or whether you want to say anything

1:11:03

uh as kind of closing remarks but

1:11:09

well do you want to go vanessa and i’ll or um go in order

1:11:18

you have good things to say i had it over here yeah um well i guess i guess i would

1:11:24

just say that um so i mean i’ll just kind of just a refresh but

1:11:30

i mean it’s kind of like the question was about the history like how the history plays into yeah and so um for me it’s

1:11:36

like um i’ve had this kind of like let’s say like this own personal mythology about

1:11:42

my family history which is that they’re it was hard to track down you couldn’t trace it back so there wasn’t really

1:11:48

this like kiss it was like again this it comes back to this unrootedness right and so personally

1:11:55

a lot of the history that i or that i work with are just almost personal stories like

1:12:01

personal experiences that i’ve had as a child or stories that i heard my mom taught me and so it really

1:12:06

that has so i mean um yeah so it kind of

1:12:13

it’s there was almost for a while there there was almost nothing for me to carry right like i really identified with that

1:12:20

saying a rolling stone gathers no moss like i think basically up until my 30s like that was how i lived my life

1:12:27

and then eventually i was just like you know like there’s actually this there’s um i was thinking that she was

1:12:32

funny he was thinking about this book uh unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera and um and what that means right and um

1:12:40

the unbearable lightness of like not having that responsibility not having that weight to carry which is

1:12:45

uh responsibility and and and with that comes belonging actually right and so

1:12:50

um and so that kind of was the shift where then that’s where i started trying to

1:12:56

explore that it’s not it’s funny it’s like when i think about it now it’s almost

1:13:01

like an anxiety right it’s like you’re exploring this like this being unanchored through these projects and that

1:13:07

and that starts to create um starts to unravel this history let’s say

1:13:13

right to make it more tangible um but it’s funny though recently uh

1:13:19

like um this last year um i was in medicine hat and i was like in my apartment building

1:13:25

and uh i was just like is this is this my life my neighbors were being like super loud

1:13:30

they’re probably like just partying a lot because the pandemic was just starting and there’s like way too much

1:13:36

solitude let’s say right and um i was just kind of in this zone i was like i feel so disconnected from like who i

1:13:45

was as a kid like now i’m just like unmoored in medicine hat in this really weird apartment building and uh i

1:13:52

was just like okay uh you know i know i’m going to hamilton and so then uh for a few months before i come out

1:13:57

here to halifax and so i was like okay like let’s just start like you read in my bio my intro all right let’s just start uh

1:14:04

learning some of these dishes for my mom and and let’s start rebuilding that kind of that cultural um

1:14:13

uh like let’s make that culture tangible again for myself so that now becomes something that i can carry with me

1:14:18

wherever i go right and so that was actually it’s something that was extremely personally important but now i’m

1:14:24

starting to see just how much that’s in line with my practice right and again that kind of comes back this idea

1:14:31

of the histories that i carry are personal experiences and then now having this experience of

1:14:37

these cooking lessons with my mom was another way to carry that history let’s

1:14:42

say right so yeah thank you so vanessa

1:14:48

yeah no i’ll make a quick roy that was just great i don’t want to mess that um uh should have had you

1:14:54

close but yeah no i think just adding briefly it’s like everything’s sort of being said but it’s like

1:15:01

for me it’s also just having thinking about his jury in relationship to

1:15:06

futurity actually like it’s i think likewise like i i have no knowledge of my history um

1:15:13

just because of certain traumas um it just isn’t spoken of and i’m trying

1:15:19

to actually learn about it but but all i have to turn to are institutions like i think which is why

1:15:24

i’ve been drawn to the museum collection but the problems of that so thinking about history actually

1:15:30

in relationship to moving forward um so maybe i’ll end it there yeah

1:15:38

okay i think we have no more questions in the chat so i just want to

1:15:44

thank all three of you for spending this time with us and sharing your work but also a lot of i think

1:15:50

personal stories um about yourselves and your family so thank you very much for all of that

1:15:56

uh it’s been a great pleasure for me to have had this opportunity to host you and to share this kind of hour with you

1:16:03

so again thank you to marigold roy and vanessa um it’s been a wonderful afternoon

1:16:11

and i hope you have a pleasant evening or i think you’re going into night time now roy where you are

1:16:16

yeah pretty uh the sun setting the sun is up

1:16:22

thank you thank you so much to everybody this is so wonderful to hear your stories and everything okay thanks bye

1:16:32

bye you

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