Transits and Returns

VANCOUVER ART GALLERY, Vancouver BC - Sep 28, 2019 - Jan 26, 2020
by Michael Turner
Now in her third year as the VAG’s Senior Curatorial Fellow of Indigenous Art, Tarah Hogue (Métis/Dutch) continues to play a leading role in the gallery’s effort to decolonize itself as a site of Eurocentrism, toward a model more conducive to diversity, equity and engagement.
Her inaugural 2018 exhibition, how do you carry the land?, focused on the collaborative work of artists Ayumi Goto (Japanese-Canadian) and Peter Morin (Tahltan), who in turn commissioned additional artists to collaborate with them (and Hogue) on a series of performances and shifting displays. For her current exhibition, Transits and Returns, collaboration begins at the curatorial level.
As a 2018 visiting curator at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Hogue teamed up with fellow Indigenous curators Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash, Chicana), Freja Carmichael (Quandamooka), Léuli Luna'i Eshraghi (Samoa) and Lana Lopesi (Samoa) to produce The Commute. Its current iteration, Transits and Returns, features the work of 21 local First Nations and Pacific artists “whose practices are both rooted in the specifi cities of their cultures and routed via their travels.” Of particular interest is the exhibition’s material emphasis on the interrelationship of movement, territory, kinship and representation, “with many artworks inhabiting multiple categories.”
Participating artists include Edith Amituanai, Christopher Ando, Natalie Ball, BC Collective with Louisa Afoa, Drew Kahu'aina Broderick with Napali Aluli Souza, Hannah Brontë, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Mariquita Davis, Chantal Fraser, Maureen Gruben, Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Taloi Havini, Lisa Hilli, Carol McGregor, Marianne Nicolson, Ahilapalapa Rands, Debra Sparrow and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss.
vanartgallery.bc.ca