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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.

Talks & Events

  • 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.

     

  • There are reasons for looking and feeling and thinking about things that are invisible: A two day event on New Narratives in Art Writing.

    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.

Publications

  • Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being

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    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


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  • Quit India

     

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    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.