Exhibit at Gallery Gachet: A Collective Audit of the VAG Vancouver Art Gallery
Exhibit at Gallery Gachet: A Collective Audit of the VAG Vancouver Art Gallery dec 8
The past few months I have been meeting with some rad folks to talk about access in intersectional ways. We are a bunch of folks who experience oppression/marginaliation in many differnt ways and we delved into the multitude ways this has played out in our lives in the "Art world" as well. Carmen Papalia, invited asked us to be part of this discussion group of sorts, to talk access and potentially be part of the exhibit he was putting together at Gallery Gachet. I appreciated being part of this group and speaking about accessibility in terms of my experiences as a queer, women of colour, who is an introvert, who deals with mental health and is a highly sensative person, a trauma survivor, an activist and interdisciplinary creator. I appreciated learning, listening and witnessing others experiences in their lives about what access looks like and what folks dreams for access can be. We brought a lot from our own narratives and looked at access in terms of: race, class, ability, sex, gender, age, how they intersect in our nuanced, beautiful lives.
Here is the discription of the show/process:
"The New Access Consortium is the collective, decentered, non institutional organizational structure initiated by artist Carmen Papalia through which a fluid cast of members are supported in assessing the conditions of access in public and institutional spaces. This exhibition showcases an archive of experiential research, documentation and guiding texts from a closed meeting series on the topic of open and emergent models for access which culminated in an independent accessibility audit of the Vancouver Art Gallery —in which the terms of the audit are based in the participant’s subjective perceptions regarding what is accessible. Pointing to histories of marginalization and cultural violence, and illuminating the disabling power structures that limit one’s agency and potential to thrive, Arlene Bowman, romham pádraig gallacher, Taryn Goodwin, Jotika Chaudhary, Carmen Papalia, Myah Catherine Rose Wallace and aly de la cruz yip reflect on access while offering representations of their subjective experience of the supposed public institution that is the Vancouver Art Gallery." Alongside a piece of visual art i created, I shared a dance piece to a song I wrote looking at my feelings of despair and helplessness when not feeling supported or seen by organizations, spaces, intstitutions, communities etc.The songs called I often see myself falling. Here are some pix curtesy of Arlene Bowman!
The show is now in it's last few days it runs: November 8th- December 13th 2015 One of the activities that we did as a group, which i made into my final art piece for the exhibit, was making a list of ways that I thrive when Im in space, what I need to be well and feel comfortable, safe and able to learn in a healthy environment. It's on the biggest piece of canvas I have ever worked with. It was alot of fun to make. Here are some pics from our opening night: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallerygachet/sets/72157659240238274 Face Book event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/907678359287769/ Here is the link on gallery gachets website: http://gachet.org/2015/12/03/the-new-access-consortium-presents-a-collective-audit-of-the-vancouver-art-gallery/
Check out an article written about aly de la cruz yip's film that was part of the exhibit http://bordercrossingsmag.com/article/marginalized-by-design
This was also my first entry point to being a part of something at Gallery Gachet. It was such a pleasure to learn about all the amazing people, exhibits and activism that this gallery and community have been a part of and are still a part of. IF you dont know alot about gachet here is some more info: http://gachet.org/about/. They are an amazing community of people that focus on supporting, creating alongside and working with folks who deal with mental health, are artists and who live in the downtown east side. This was such a rad project to be a part of and it was the first time displaying my art and work at an art gallery <3 <3 -Jotika Chaudhary
