From January until April, the Belkin’s Outdoor Screen sets a number of works in relation to one another, drawing associations between the exhibition in the gallery, the longterm artist’s residency in the Outdoor Art program and the affinities to be found with research partners on campus. she who had scanned the flower of the world…, (1987/2015-2020) by Laiwan appears in the exhibition Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists and simultaneously on the digital screen. Begun in 1987, the work places collected flowers into slides which are projected as they slowly decay, change and fade from the impacts of time, light and heat. In both incarnations, inside and outside the gallery, the work questions what is an image and what is a photograph.
Screening alongside this work by Laiwan, Drawing in the Meadow Workshop (2021) with Chrystal Sparrow and Holly Schmidt documents a series of guided sessions that deeply engage with the clover, plantain, buttercup and grasses in the meadow through the act of drawing. Using oil pastels and charcoal, participants explore memory, emotion and kinship relations with plants foregrounding human/nonhuman intimacy, curiosity and connection.
Beginning in March, we are including Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE (2003) to acknowledge the current unfolding conflict in the Ukraine. IMAGINE PEACE is the artist’s worldwide initiative of anti-violence. This ongoing project uses stamps, posters, banners, badges, the internet and other media to communicate its message of peace. This rubber stamp came from Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE installation in the Arsenale’s Utopia Station exhibition at the 2003 Venice Biennale.
Installed in the summer of 2021, the 4×2 metre digital screen extends the exhibitions and programs from inside the Belkin to the outside through video, sound and animation, supporting a more porous encounter for visitors. Transforming the grassy area in front of the gallery into an informal and flexible lounge space, with the boardwalk from Holly Schmidt’s Fireweed Fields as a functioning viewing platform, the screen creates a space for engagement and conversation. Alongside curated works, the screen also highlights upcoming programs and events, and is often a site for facilitated conversations, class visits and workshops.
Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists highlights the artist's attention to the material and symbolic vocabularies of print and lens-based media between 1980 and 2000 and features her early interventions into the logic of the book form and the ideology of historical and encyclopedic genres. Guest curated by Amy Kazymerchyk, the exhibition title references processes related to printmaking, while also speaking to the absent narratives, redacted perspectives and critical refusals that are latent in official publications.
[more]Tours and discussions of Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists can be arranged according to current COVID-19 safety protocols from Tuesday to Friday for groups and classes, lasting 50 minutes and longer. For more information, please contact Belkin Public Programs by email at belkin.tours@ubc.ca or by phone at (604) 822-5600.
[more]With the opening of the Image Bank exhibition on June 18, 2021, the gallery is pleased to launch the Outdoor Screen, a 4x2 metre outdoor screen curated with media works from the Belkin’s permanent collection and archive alongside work commissioned specifically for this platform.
[more]Laiwan writes, "Begun in 1987 investigating the questions, What is an image? What is a photograph?, she who had scanned the flower of the world... is an ongoing project where I collect flowers from the city I am showing in, placing the petals into slide mounts."
[more]