Amy Fung
A writer, researcher and curator born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and spent her formative years in and around Edmonton on Treaty 6 Territory. Her writing has been published and commissioned by national and international publications, galleries, museums, festivals, and journals since 2007. Her multifarious curatorial projects have spanned exhibitions, cinematic and live presentations, as well as discursive events across Canada and abroad. “Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being” is her first book.
Conversation and book launches
AMY FUNG, KIM NGUYEN
May 16, 2019
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Massy Books
229 East Georgia Street, Vancouver
7pm
Saturday, May 18, 2019
Richmond Public Library
100-7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond
1pm
Please join us for the launch of Amy Fung’s new book Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being, co-published by Artspeak and Book*hug. Also reading from her newest collection of texts is former Artspeak Director, now San Francisco based curator Kim Nguyen.
“Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being” is the debut collection of creative nonfiction essays by Amy Fung. In it, Fung takes a closer examination at Canada’s mythologies of multiculturalism, settler colonialism, and identity through the lens of a national art critic.
Following the tangents of a foreign-born perspective and the complexities and complicities in participating in ongoing acts of colonial violence, the book as a whole takes the form of a very long land acknowledgement. Taken individually, each piece roots itself in the learning and unlearning process of a first generation settler immigrant as she unfurls each region’s sense of place and identity.
MARIA FUSCO, EILEEN MYLES, LYNNE TILLMAN, JACOB WREN
April 4–April 5, 2014
Building on the West Coast literary movement known as New Narrative, There are reasons for looking and feeling and thinking about things that are invisible brings together four writers at the edge of literary and contemporary art writing in the voices of Maria Fusco, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, and Jacob Wren.
As a literary genre, New Narrative addresses the structure of narrative by experimenting in fragmentation, poetic strategies, and autobiographical allusions. As a formal conceit, New Narrative is an embodied form of writing, a type of creative non-fiction that relies on presence as much as memory.
As a weekend of readings and responses in Vancouver, British Columbia, There are reasons for looking and feeling and thinking about things that are invisible aims to re-contextualize the field of contemporary art writing as both a form and a labour of creative production. Developing alongside poetry, literary, and art histories, the field of art writing is in itself a spectrum of craft and praxis to be discussed and reflected upon critically.
Schedule:
April 4, 7–9 pm, Eileen Myles and Jacob Wren
April 5, 2–5 pm, Lynne Tillman and Maria Fusco
At the Western Front Grand Luxe Hall
Doors will open half an hour prior. First come first serve seating. No latecomers.
Co-presented by 221A, Artspeak, and Western Front. Organized by Amy Fung.
The title for this event is a line from an Eileen Myles text on Martha Diamond.
Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being
Title: Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being
Category: nonfiction/essays
Artist: Amy Fung
Design: Malcolm Sutton
Publisher: Artspeak and Book*hug
Year published: 2019
Pages: 200p
Cover: soft
Binding: trade paper
Weight: 226 g
Dimensions: 20.3 x 1.1 x 13.3 cm
ISBN:9781771665056
Cost: $20
Title: Quit India: Divya Mehra
Category: Catalogue
Writers: J.J. Kegan McFadden, Kim Nguyen, Amy Fung, Natasha Bissonauth, Kendra Place
Editors: Derek Dunlop, Jessica Antony
Design: Lauren Wickware
Publisher: Platform, Artspeak
Printer: Friesens
Year published: 2013
Edition: 200
Pages: 80pp
Cover: Cloth
Binding: Perfect Bound
Process: Offset
Features: Gold foil on brown cloth covers and spine
Dimensions: 21 x 13.5 x 1 cm
Weight: 216 g
ISBN: 978-0-9697675-8-9
Cost: sold out
Published in collaboration with Platform (Winnipeg), Quit, India, documents and elaborates upon Divya Mehra’s two solo exhibitions : The Party is Over, presented at Artspeak in 2011 and Turf War presented at Platform in 2010.