Art as Critical Tourism: Sensory Time Warps & Acts of Worldbuilding
Panel discussion by Xuan Ye, Wenxin Zhang, and Belinda Kwan

Saturday, April 25, 2020
10AM–12PM
Online using Zoom (link available upon registration)
FREE

In a time of viral, transpacific crisis, artists Xuan Ye & Wenxin Zhang discuss the oscillatory relationship between their artistic research and the real-time events that inform them. Through magical realism, speculative fiction, and cyborgian collaboration, the two artists navigate themes that range from the traumatic to the satirical. Combining the diasporic and bioinformatic, they share new sensory models for experiencing space and time. This event will be moderated by Belinda Kwan, curator of our current exhibition filling the Klein bottle (y) {.

This event is presented as part of filling the Klein bottle, a n exhibition series co-presented by Varley Art Gallery, InterAccess, Bunker 2 CAC, and Trinity Square Video.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Xuan Ye / 叶轩 (CN/CA) makes media poetry synthesizing language, code, sound, body, image, data, light, and time through diagrammatic processes and multi-medial translations. X’s work has been featured, exhibited and performed internationally, including Canadian Art, AGO (CA), Vivid Projects (UK), Supermarket Art Fair (SE), InterAccess (CA), Inside-out Art Museum (CN), Goethe-Institut, ArtAsiaPacific, KUNSTFORUM, Trinity Square Video (CA), among others. X’s live performances and music releases have received critical accolades from Bandcamp, Musicworks and Exclaim!

Wenxin Zhang / 张文心 was born in 1989 in Anhui, China. She received her MFA degree at California College of the Arts in 2013. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented all over the world, in galleries including the Guangdong Museum of Art (CN), Artist Television Gallery (US), and Muffatwerk (DE). Using traditional and new media image-making techniques, her artistic processes are concerned with the experience of time and its progression from the mundane to the transcendent.


ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Belinda Kwan / 关浩恩 is a Chinese-Settler curator interested in exhibitionary forms of critique, pedagogy, and advocacy. Her research-based practice focuses on North American techno/sub/urban infrastructures, and the global legacies of oppression that inform them. She has worked with/for local and international artists on projects presented by artist-run centres, public galleries, and non-profit organizations such as the Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts (int’ l); Art Gallery of York University (Toronto); Myseum of Toronto; and Y+ contemporary (Toronto).