Invisible City

The Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art conducts research on questions relating to Asian art. Vancouver is the ideal city for such a project; with well established communities from many Asian countries, its history and economy are heavily influenced by Asian relations.

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Vancouver is a marginal and interstitial city, a city of mixed cultures, observing the world from a perch overlooking the Pacific, isolated from the rest of Canada by large distances and formidable mountain ranges. A young city, behind its thin colonial facade are fagile negotiations that continue to seek accommodation with the vast nature around it, with the aboriginal nations on whose traditional land it sits, and with the many diaspora that weave its social fabric.

Into this context Centre A welcome two of Taiwan's leading contemporary artists, Yuan Goang-Ming and Chen Chieh-Jen. Their provocative images remind me of the recent remark made by a so-called homeless person: "Everyone is homeless". It personally this intersection is a nameless urban space, dispossessed, sleeping in the empty daylight. When we leave the dark space of Yuan's projection, we emerge into a bright gallery, only to plunge again into the world of an underground population deprived of the difference between night and day. Has Chen Chieh-Jen found the missing people? Are they real? Do they seek shelter here? Have they evolved or mutated, or do they survive only by virtue of technology? These disturbing images expose many of the most profound and discomforting problems of our time. Going beyond social and ecological questions these faces reflect the suffering of humanity as we search for a way out of the labyrinth of civilization.

(Excerpt from introduction of exhibition catalogue written by Hank Bull)

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