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Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo accompanies the exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (May 29, 2021 – January 3, 2022) and is the second in a series of triennial exhibitions that provide an expansive look at contemporary art in the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver.

The exhibition presents these thirty-four artists with connections to Vancouver and neighbouring territories and emphasizes recent works that hold a particular resonance for this time and place. Disorientations and Echo features both emerging and well-established artists and encompasses a wide array of media and modes of production—including drawing, painting, photography, sound, textile and sculpture—that range in scale from large immersive installations to small intimate works. The artworks reach beyond the central gallery space to include quiet corner alcoves, a three-story rotunda and move outward with text-based and sound works on the building’s exterior. Common threads throughout the exhibition are cultural resilience, the articulation of suppressed histories, the imagining of emancipated futures, the performance of identity and embodied knowledge.

Artists represented in Disorientations and Echo are Jim Adams, Afuwa with Tonye Aganaba and Marci T. House, 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 with Tiziana La Melia, Whess Harman, James Nexw'Kalus-Xwalacktun Harry and Lauren Brevner, Odera Igbokwe, Kwiigay iiwaans, Chief Floyd Joseph, Katie Kozak, Yaimel López Zaldívar, Betty Mulat, Oraf, Manuel Axel Strain, Valérie d. Walker, Zam Zam Warsame, M.V. Williams, Lam Wong, Marika St. Rose Yeo and Kenneth Yuen.

With texts by each of the five curators, the publication examines not only the connections and significance of the artists and their work in this place, but also explores the curatorial process of working collaboratively within the institution and during the ongoing turbulences in our world. Disorientations and Echo was curated by Phanuel Antwi, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Jenn Jackson, Christian Vistan and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art.

Contributors

1. Phanuel Antwi

   is an artist, organizer, curator and Associate Professor of English concerned with race, poetics, movements, intimacy and struggle. He works with text, dance, film and photography to intervene in artistic, academic and public spaces. His book, On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace is forthcoming. Dr. Antwi holds a Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

2. Grant Arnold

   joined the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1993 as an Assistant Curator and was the Audain Curator of British Columbia Art from 2005 to 2022. During that time, he contributed to the Gallery’s exhibition program and the development of the collection. His writing has appeared in many exhibition catalogues, anthologies and journals over the past thirty years. He received an M.A. in Art History from the University of British Columbia after studies at the University of Saskatchewan and Banff School of Fine Arts.

3. Jenn Jackson

   is a curator, writer, and researcher. She has held a range of roles at post-secondary institutions, galleries and museums and in public art commissioning, connecting relationships and impacts between regional, national and international scales. Jackson has published texts on contemporary art in catalogues, books and journals and is co-editor of Haunt, a nonprofit that produces texts, editions, events, performances and exhibitions. Jackson has curated exhibitions and event programs at Libby Leshgold Gallery, SFU Galleries, Burrard Arts Foundation and 221A in Vancouver, as well as at Portland State University and documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, Germany.

4. Jeneen Frei Njootli

   is a 2SQ Vuntut Gwitchin, Czech and Dutch artist and curator. They are invested in Indigenous sovereignty and decolonization and concerned with the production, dissemination and embodiment of images. Frei Njootli received their BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, and their MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, where they are Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory. They currently live and work in their home territory of Old Crow, Yukon.

5. Christian Vistan

   is an artist originally from the peninsula now known as Bataan, Philippines, currently based in Vancouver and Delta, BC. In their artworks, they translate experiences of distance and diaspora into hybrid forms that bring memory, place, poetry and abstraction together. They are particularly interested in working with water as a material in painting and in personal, familial and migrant histories. They make paintings, texts and exhibitions, and often collaborate with other artists, writers and curators. They received their BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Co-published with the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Vancouver Art Gallery would like to thank Visionary Partner for Scholarship and Publications: The Richardson Family; Exhibition Support: Major Sponsor: Peter & Joanne Brown Foundation; Supporting Sponsors: Phil Lind, The Poseley Family, Bruce Munro Wright, and Joanie Anderson.

1. Disorientations and Echo
   $45

   Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo accompanies the exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery and is the second in a series of triennial exhibitions that provide an expansive look at contemporary art in the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver, and neighbouring territories.

   Disorientations and Echo was curated by Phanuel Antwi, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Jenn Jackson, Christian Vistan and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art.

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