Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Yvonne Chew

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Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Yvonne Chew

Sell Out is a series by interdisciplinary artist Angela Fama (she/they), who co-creates conversations with individual artists across Vancouver. Questioning ideas of artistry, identity, “day jobs,” and how they intertwine, Fama settles in with each artist (at a local café of their choice) and asks the same series of questions. With one roll of medium format film, Fama captures portraits of the artist after their conversations.

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What Keeps The Art(ists) Alive?: Reflections on Play It Loud! and Creating Art in Vancouver

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What Keeps The Art(ists) Alive?: Reflections on Play It Loud! and Creating Art in Vancouver

In the Vancouver spoken word scene, Johnny Trinh, Vancouver Poetry House artistic director, is well known for reminding poets and audiences that “it takes a community to raise an artist.” As a veteran of many poetry shows in Vancouver and throughout the country, I have had many opportunities to ruminate on the meaning of this phrase; in particular, its invocation of the collective as the inherent foundation by which a poet, or any type of artist, nurtures the sort of self and worldly awareness that makes artistry viable and valuable. I am also reminded of author and cultural critic bell hooks’ assertion: “I think that part of what a culture of domination has done is raise that romantic relationship up as the single most important bond, when of course the single most important bond is that of community.”

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Dreaming as Resistance in Ghinwa Yassine’s “Seeing Double”

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Dreaming as Resistance in Ghinwa Yassine’s “Seeing Double”

I arrive at Morrow carrying the fatigue and pain of a long day spent in my chronically ill body. The winter sun has already set and the lights are turned low. As meditation music plays in the background–a gentle massage for my ears–I tiptoe my way through a maze of potted plants and lamps, familiar to looking for a seat in a friend’s living room. There is a bed at the front of the room, adding to this cozy, home-like feeling; a dip in its middle echoes the weight of past bodies held in its embrace. Though it is technically “on stage,” the bed marks clearly that this space is not just a performance venue, but rather is being re-imagined as a home, or perhaps even a sanctuary. 

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Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Kevin Jesuino

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Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Kevin Jesuino

Sell Out is a series by interdisciplinary artist Angela Fama (she/they), who co-creates conversations with individual artists across Vancouver. Questioning ideas of artistry, identity, “day jobs,” and how they intertwine, Fama settles in with each artist (at a local café of their choice) and asks the same series of questions. With one roll of medium format film, Fama captures portraits of the artist after their conversations.

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Moving For Love & Backbone: Brandon Wint’s Exploration of the Body and Jazz

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Moving For Love & Backbone: Brandon Wint’s Exploration of the Body and Jazz

“In my twenties, love was the only word I knew”, confesses filmmaker Brandon Wint in his documentary, Moving For Love (2024). The heartbeat of his work; Vancouver-based filmmaker and poet navigates the complexity of Black identity, the intersections of disability & race, and community-making in Vancouver through the lens of love.

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Incidental Reflections on the Urban in Taizo Yamamoto’s Carts, Hedges, Lions

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Incidental Reflections on the Urban in Taizo Yamamoto’s Carts, Hedges, Lions

Carts, Hedges, Lions reads as an urban archival project featuring detailed illustrations by Taizo Yamamoto that render moments and decades of Vancouver’s landscapes. Complimenting his drawings, Aaron Peck, Kevin Chong, and Jackie Wong bookend each collection of illustrations with an essay, rooted in their own relationships with the titular images. Yamamoto, an architect by trade and Principal of Yamamoto Architecture, has his works interspersed throughout the landscape of the Lower Mainland, representing perhaps, what may be ambivalently considered “modern builds.” Knowing that Yamamoto plays a role in the construction of Vancouver’s future urban landscape, these drawings in reverence to the Foo Dog, hedges, and shopping carts evoke a particular nostalgic effect. In an email exchange, Yamamoto speculates that this nostalgia is activated because these drawings “[record] moments that are already passed and lost.” I am one to agree.

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Confronting Silence: Family Reunification and Mental Health in the Filipino Diaspora in Inay

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Confronting Silence: Family Reunification and Mental Health in the Filipino Diaspora in Inay

Thea and cinematographer Jeremiah Reyes—a Filipino husband-and-wife team—turn the camera on themselves in Inay (Tagalog for “Mama”) to explore the cultural and psychological impacts on children whose mothers left the Philippines out of economic necessity. Thea begins a thoughtful inquiry into the experiences of family separation by interviewing her husband, Jeremiah, and her best friend, Shirley. Through her explorations, Inay intertwines personal narratives with historical context to shed light on the impact of migration policies created by the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). As a viewer, I stumbled with Thea as she navigates the pain and trauma her partner and friend have experienced through migration and mental illness and challenges the notion of normalcy within Filipino immigrant experiences. 

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