If this is the party I want, you may not be part of it
Jennifer Chan, Fang Di, Will Kwan, Alvin Luong, Midi Onodera, Rah, Karen Tam
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Opening Reception: Saturday, August 27 from 2:00-4:00pm in Hamilton Artists Inc.'s ArcelorMittal Dofasco Courtyard (155 James St. N.)
Art Bus Tour: Saturday, September 24 from 1pm-4:40pm (Free)
Join the party of your dreams: dance party, birthday party, tea party, makeshift party, your local political party (that no one votes for). Party like there is no tomorrow!
If this is the party I want, you may not be part of it is an experimental and curious multimedia project that offers views on expanding and challenging the concept of party as a form of social interaction, as well as representations of a political entity or a belief system. First initiated through wordplay, and then activated by a composition of moving images and installation works, the project foregrounds and inquiries into the cultural and political implications of party and its intricacies in the context of a contemporary society. In this proposition, there is party for one person, for politically engaged individuals, for racialized bodies, and for culturally isolated communities. It sets out to develop new possibilities: Party is for everyone, tangible or intangible; it’s a call and response.
If this is the party I want includes: Will Kwan’s Cultural Revolutions that draws a parallel between historic events and rave culture; Karen Tam’s Karaoke Sessions that invites multi-lingual performances of old favourites; Utopia Social Club by Alvin Luong offering an EDM version of the Internationale; Fang Di’s Triumph of the Skies making wishes into faces for three flight attendants; Midi Onodera’s Nobody Knows embraces solitude for moments of the self; Rah’s Ethnic Roots, a parody of stereotypical racial authenticity, in drag; and Jennifer Chan’s installation Body Party that puts the party where it longs to be – in bed.
Curated by Henry Heng Lu, through Call Again, a nomadic initiative/collective committed to creating space for contemporary diasporic artistic practices in the context of North America and beyond. This exhibition is a new iteration of the 2018 exhibition, OMG, it’s a Party!, curated by Henry Heng Lu and Winnie Wu, at Vtape, Toronto.
Related Programming:
Art Bus Tour: Saturday, September 24 from 1:00-4:40pm (Free)
Join us for a bus tour making stops at Hamilton Artists’ Inc., The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, The McMaster Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of Burlington. Free event, but pre-registration is required. Please register only if you plan on using our bus service. Seating is limited. Travel and admission is free, all four venues are wheelchair accessible. Wheelchair accessible spots available on the bus.
Itinerary:
1:00-1:40: Hamilton Artists Inc.
1:45-2:25: Workers Arts and Heritage Centre
2:40-3:20: McMaster Museum of Art
3:40-4:20: Art Gallery of Burlington
4:40: Return to Hamilton Artists Inc.
About the artists:
Jennifer Chan is an artist and web developer who makes gifs, websites, editioned objects and installations as social commentary on sex, love, pain and equality. Her work has been featured on ArtForum, Rhizome, ArtFCity, HyperAllergic and Dazed. She lives in Toronto with a cat.
Fang Di is a Chinese artist who is currently working in Shenzhen, China. His work discusses racism and social hierarchy through studies on news and political affairs. By switching in between identities like a chameleon, he moves smoothly among different social classes, absorbing and resolving people’s desire and wisdom gained through migration with his sensitivity. He often uses various artistic languages to explore the entanglement and meaning of urban life, and bravely discovers how special groups are defined under globalization and nationalism in the inverted reality, which has become an inevitable social fracture today. Fang Di has exhibited at many solo shows: including The Golden Bowl at Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai,2019), DÀ Qi DÀ LUÒ at Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai,2017), Lost in Shenzhen presented by Jiu Society at 33 Art Space (Shenzhen,2016), HIT ME! at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (Wilmington,2013). His group shows include Macalline Art Center (Beijing,2022), Kunstverein in Hamburg(Hamburg,2021), OCAT (Shenzhen,2020), Kulturforum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin(Berlin,2019), Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester,2019), Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai,2018), Julia Stoschek Collection(Düsseldorf,2018), Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Shenzhen,2017), He Xiangning Art Museum(Shenzhen,2017), Today Art Museum (Beijing,2015), Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou,2015), Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Moscow,2014), Maryland Art Place (Baltimore,2013). Fang’s films have been screened at the Chicago Underground Film Festival (Chicago, 2014) and Pantalla Fantasma (Basque Country, 2014). He is a recipient of the New Star Award (2017), Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship (2013) , and finalist of Huayu Youth Award (2018) and Yishu 8 Award (2018). And he has been a resident artist at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California,2014) and Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York,2013). Fang received a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. He is also co-founder of the Jiu Society.
Will Kwan is a Hong Kong-born, Tkaronto-based artist and educator. He received his MFA from Columbia University and from 2004 to 2006 was a research fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, The Netherlands. Kwan's work is held in the permanent collections of M+ in Hong Kong, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Kwan's work has been exhibited at triennial and biennial exhibitions in Folkestone, Liverpool, Montreal, and Venice, and at venues including MoMA PS1, Art in General, and the Cooper Union in New York, the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the MAC VAL in Vitry-sur-Seine, the CAC in Vilnius, the Polish National Museum in Poznan, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and The Power Plant in Toronto, and The Western Front and Centre A in Vancouver. Kwan has been an artist-in-residence at the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, and the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito. Kwan has been a full-time faculty member at the University of Toronto since 2007, teaching courses in interdisciplinary art practice and time-based media at the University of Toronto Scarborough and serving as a faculty member in the Master of Visual Studies Program at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.
Alvin Luong works with stories of human migration, land, and dialogues from diasporic working class communities to create artworks that reflect upon historical development and its intimate effects on the lives of people. Luong has shown and screened artworks at the Images Festival (Toronto), Boers-Li Gallery (Beijing), Gudskul (Jakarta), and The Polygon Gallery (Vancouver). The artist has held research and resident artist appointments at the Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing), HB Station Contemporary Art Research Center (Guangzhou), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and Gallery TPW (Toronto).
Midi Onodera is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist who has been making films and videos for 35+ years. In 2018, Midi received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. Her work is laced with markers of her experiences as a feminist, lesbian, Japanese Canadian woman. She has produced over 25 independent shorts, ranging from 16mm film to digital video to toy camera formats. Her film The Displaced View (1988) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gemini Awards. Skin Deep (1995), her theatrical feature, screened internationally at festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2006 she has made over 500+ Vidoodles (defined as bite-sized 30 second to 2 minute video doodles). For the past 12 years she presents an annual video project addressing themes of language, media, politics, and the everyday. Her online videos can be viewed at: www.midionodera.com
Rah Eleh is a digital and performance artist and a PhD candidate at die Die Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. Rah’s work has been exhibited extensively internationally at spaces including: Venice Biennale (ECC, Palazzo Mora), Images Festival (Toronto), Museum London, Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts), Miami Art Basel, Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem, Netherlands), and the Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece). She has been the recipient of numerous awards including: Chalmers Arts Fellowship, SSHRC Canada Graduate and Doctoral scholarships, and several Canada Council for the Arts, Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council grants. She has been awarded many residencies including the Koumaria Residency (Greece, 2016), Studio Das Weisse Haus (Vienna, 2014) and the ArtSlant Georgia Fee Residency (Paris, 2014).
Karen Tam is a Tiohtià:ke/Montréal-based artist and curator whose research focuses on the constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities through her installations in which she recreates Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters. She has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in North America, Europe, and China, including the He Xiangning Art Museum, and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Tam was the winner of the Prix Giverny Capital 2021 awarded by the Fondation Giverny pour l'art contemporain, and was a finalist for the 2017 Prix Louis-Comtois, a finalist for the 2016 Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, and long-listed for the 2010 and 2016 Sobey Art Awards. Tam holds a MFA in Sculpture (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and a PhD in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London). She is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau.
About the curator:
Henry Heng Lu is a curator, writer, and artist based in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada. Currently, he is Executive Director/Curator of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. He is a co-founder of Call Again, a mobile initiative/collective committed to creating space for contemporary diasporic artistic practices, within Canada and beyond, through exhibitions, screenings, and roundtables. In 2018, he won an Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG) Exhibition of the Year Award for his curatorial project, Far and Near: the Distance(s) between Us, at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. His writings have been published by Canadian Art, ArtAsiaPacific, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, C Magazine, Richmond Art Gallery, PLATFORM Gallery, ArchDaily and Gardiner Museum. In 2019, he was a Researcher/Curator-in-Residence at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shenzhen, China. Lu holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. He was on the jury for the 2020 Sobey Art Award at the National Gallery of Canada. He has been a member of the City of Vancouver's Public Art Committee since 2020, and has served as a juror for municipal and provincial arts councils, as well as international prizes.
Thank you to our programming partners: The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, The McMaster Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of Burlington.
©2024 Hamilton Artists Inc.