Artspeak is an exhibition and programming space encouraging dialogue between contemporary visual art and writing. Artspeak is committed to intersectional participation and exchange.
233 Carrall St
Vancouver BC V6B2J2
Wednesday-Saturday
12PM to 6PM
ov
On View
Penciled in and Eager, with my head in the sand is a ritual in the form of painting (2022-2024) with acrylic, watercolor, ink, charcoal, color pencil, chalk, oil pastel, graphite, rain and dirt all layered as gesture drawings on pieces of un-stretched canvas. Accompanied by a collection of handwritten letters and prayers, this work contemplates and maps migrant relations with unsurrendered Indigenous land through the perspective of an ever-changing politicized body that is immobilized by the colonial structure of borders.
Arkah अर्का is a migrant from Delhi, India, living on stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ peoples. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
They are a visual artist and writer, guided by their spirit. As they channel hope to survive racist, capitalist, and hetero-patriarchal systems- Arkah abandons colonial rules of art making. They are interested in mapping spirit as a method of archival. Aiming to retrieve the stories we are made of, memory becomes material. When visiting home, they work as an art teacher and muralist.
Recent Publications
dissident 3: ART ACTIVIST MURMURINGS
"Spatial disruption of the body; a cathartic reintroduction to the newest version of myself" dissident is a quarterly art journal devoted to exploring community driven social practices. Writing against and alongside limiting institutional historical orientation, the series positions restorative literature, intimate recollection, transdisciplinary dialogue, and the production of knowledge and pedagogical practices through active engagements with progressive social movements central to the pursuit of complex curatorial engagement. dissident investigates human-centric, intersectional, and decolonial frameworks, bridging autonomous authorship or anecdotal, self-reflective writing with activism, political agitation, and obscure cultural practice. Documenting creative participatory re-shaping, redirection, resistance, refusal, and care, dissident invites guest writers to share research at various stages of progress- an exercise in disrupting evaluation and presentation and a gesture towards critical experimentation, innovation, and generative idea sharing.
Upcoming Programs
Transgression, noun: An act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offence.
___a lineage of transgression___ curated by Liz Ikiriko, and Nya Lewis the exhibition features artists Kameelah Janan Rasheed, M. NourbeSe Phillip, Cecily Nicholson, Shala Miller and Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare. The exhibition explores language as a tool to challenge the limitations of systemic definitions of Blackness and womanhood. As writers, poets, teachers and creators Janan Rasheed and Abu-Bakare use film, audio, photocopies, collage and text to play with the materiality of words. Continuing subversive traditions practiced by noted feminist writers such as nikki giovanni, Octavia Butler, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde to contemporaries Dionne Brand, M. NourbeSe Philip and Christina Sharpe – both artists use voice, revision, redaction and annotation to expand and dismantle singular interpretations of Blackness. What happens when we free language from the page and allow it to become spatial, audible or sculptural? What does that teach us about words that attempt to define and contain us? The artists’ works are inherently bound to a lineage of makers who have provided the speculative blueprint for deconstructing monolithic notions of identity and representation.
Quarter 1 Exhibition
January 30 2025
233 Carrall St
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Off-site
Mia Glanz’s photo installation “Becky’s Purse” opens September 13, 2024 to December 14, 2024 at our offsite located on 320 Carrall St, Vancouver, BC V6A 1K2.
Artist Statement
“Becky’s Purse” is an archive of the contents of a hand bag, and the scribbled fragments of thoughts which could belong to the artist’s friend Becky, who lives with substance use and mental illness in Vancouver. A purse holds the tools which facilitate everyday life. In this sequence Mia attempts to build a homage to her friend’s identity in paraphernalia, the daily things Becky typically consumes, in the Y2K aesthetic, which she still channels in her dress and grooming from when they grew up together. A personal narrative is expressed, and so are questions about the environment which structures this narrative. The images in the archive are numbered like evidence in a crime scene. They are part of a process of looking, a search for a perpetrator and for the cause behind Becky’s illness. Photography facilitates the organization and preservation of reality to look and examine; this is the artist’s search because Becky herself wouldn’t care, wouldn’t see a problem in the same place. Her preoccupations are cataloged. Here is a document of seeing, and being seen.
Offsite is made possible by the generosity of the Cheeky Proletariat. If you are interested in exhibiting in the offsite please email office@artspeak.ca. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.