Vancouver Art Gallery – Art Connects-Directing The Eye: The Proximity of Strangers

Take a break and join us for a special screening of short films courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada to learn about some lesser known parts of Canadian history!

This Art Connects focuses on Asian Canadian stories and examines how creative representations of migrants, immigrants and travellers artfully use the body as a screen of calculated resistance, often subverting the projected end point of cultural adaptation with strategic tactics of performance.

The featured shorts probe pre-conceptions of immigrant and migrant cultural identity and presence, exploring the process of nation-making as both simultaneously imaginary and real, involving not only the visual presentation of myth-making but everyday negotiations of what it means to be Canadian.

FILMS SHOWING

Bird of Passage by Martin Defalco (1966 | 10 min)
Ping Pong by Marcel Carrière (1974 | 13 min)
Reviving the Roost by Vivek Shraya (2019 | 6 min)
Stationary by Monica Rho (2005 | 5 min)
Have You Eaten by Lina Li (2020 | 5 min)

This event is organized by Melissa Karmen Lee, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at Lancaster University on Literature and Visual cultures and was an Asian Diaspora Scholar in Residence at the David Lam Centre, Simon Fraser University in 2016.

Films provided courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

This episode of Art Connects is presented in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Institute of Asian Art.