Opening Reception: A Fusion of Traditions + Ravelling Seams: Visioning Hope

On Saturday, June 8th from 2pm to 4pm, join Massy Arts in a dual celebration. The opening of the window installation, A Fusion of Traditions, by artist Speplól Tanya Zilinski, as well as, the main gallery show Ravelling Seams: Visioning Hope by artists Allison Chow, Sena Cleave, and Rawan Hassan.

ABOUT THE SHOWS

A Fusion of Traditions

The loom-beaded tapestries in this series are a representation of reconnecting to culture and a blending of two Indigenous cultures (Anishinaabe and Stó:lō). They are an exploration of finding myself through culture and language therefore keeping it alive for future generations. Having been disconnected from my own culture and homeland has led me to explore and adopt my walking partners’ culture, traditions and language, which has connected me to spirit.

Ravelling Seams: Visioning Hope

Ravelling Seams: Visioning Hope brings together a collection of unfolding stories. From strolls in shipyards to embodying home from away, the artists in this show braid intimate reflections with public spaces, archives, and the touchstones that constitute them.

Allison Chow’s site-specific “Shifting Sculptures” and “Scrolls” interweave different sights and sounds around the Lonsdale shipyard in North Vancouver. Compiling community work and her encounters in walks by the water’s edge, these works speak of hope, imagination, and collective power.

Sena Cleave’s woven netting sculptures put into tension sonaemono (offerings) exchanged between diasporic Japanese communities. Dried kelp, apple seeds, orange peels and rice are woven using butcher’s and poly rope –strings commonly used to tie food and level brick assemblies in a construction. In this fashion, Cleave offers their ancestors a home, a home where the thread and gifts hold each other in place while leaving space for the in-betweenness spanned from this bonding gesture.

Rawan Hassan’s “Where We Once Stood” looks at archival images of Palestine pre-1948 to imagine what home is in the uninhabited present. In drawing gestures, her line work is an extension of the somatic practice of learning, seeing, and living through the results of colonization for the Palestinian diaspora. Hassan’s “tatreez” (traditional Palestinian embroidery) drifts away from the story-telling tradition of sharing where one is from and instead opens up a conversation about where she exists as a diasporic subject.

The works in this exhibition outline the edges of collective hope while ravelling the lived experience of artists reaching –but never touching– the history of what could have been.

VENUE & ACCESSIBILITY

The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver. We are located in the former MING WO building.

Registration is free and required for entrance.

The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site.

Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.

For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility

Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Tanya is an Anishinaabe artist, of Aggaamaakwaa Manitoba and is a member of The Red River Nation with family and ancestral ties to Dakota, Cree, Anishinaabe and Huron Wendat Nations throughout Turtle Island’s Plains and Great Lakes regions maternally and is Ukrainian paternally. One of their traditional names is Speplól, which means Little Crow and was a name given to them at the age of fourteen.

They were born and have lived their entire life on Ts’qó:ls, which is the Halq’eméylem name for what is known to settlers today as “Hope, B.C”. Their medium is traditional Indigenous loom beadwork and the retelling of oral stories and teachings through patterns laid out on beadwork tapestries. They were taught to loom bead at 15 years old by an Elder in their community at Chawathil First Nation. Speplól has developed methods and techniques for creating large loom beaded tapestries made from tiny glass seed beads to pass down cultural knowledge of both Anishinaabe and Stó:lō cultures to their six children and future generations.

Speplól is connected to the Stó:lō community in the Teltíyt Tribe area through unification of the last 31 years, six children, and grandchildren. They have both training and permissions to teach the language and culture of the Upper River Stó:lō people and is a certified teacher of the BCTF currently teaching the language and culture for School District 78 Fraser Cascade.

Allison Chow is an artist and writer based in the unsurrendered ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, known colonially as Vancouver. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, her practice draws from her studies of visual language, communications and a lifelong passion for immersing herself in literary worlds. Inspired by her time working in a social innovation studio for the past four years, she integrates tools such as ethnography and co-design into her practice, aiming to leverage curiosity and connection for systemic wellness and grassroots change. With a deep commitment to community-engaged art, Chow invites others to join her as fellow art-makers, thinkers, and researchers through playful embodied practices.

Sena Cleave is an artist living in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ peoples, or Vancouver, Canada. Working in sculpture, language, and photographic experiments, they address il/legibility and hybridity in contemporary Japanese diasporic experiences. They hold a BFA from Simon Fraser University. Recent exhibitions include Flavoured Soup, 560 Gallery; New and Emerging, Seymour Art Gallery; I Have Forgotten My Umbrella, Mónica Reyes Gallery; and Digital Interventions Part 2: Mediating Vessels, Massy Arts Society. Cleave’s writing has been published online as part of Timelines, Contemporary Art Gallery’s 50th anniversary web archive, and Slow Calendar, an ongoing textiles project by The Only Animal Theatre.

Rawan Hassan is a queer Palestinian artist based in the unceded traditional territories xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, (in so called “Vancouver, Canada”). Her artwork explores realism and the abstract, through patterning, linework and pencil drawings. Her goal is to create work that reflects the cultures, experiences and perspectives she grew up and continues to evolve with. She is also interested in creating work that reflects the world around, while also creating possibilities of what could be.