VANCOUVER, BC, September 1, 2021 – On Thursday, September 9, three new art exhibitions will open at Burrard Arts Foundation (BAF), a local visual arts nonprofit and gallery.
Two of the shows were produced by the latest participants in BAF’s Residency Program, artists Maria-Margaretta and Parvin Peivandi. During the program, the two artists worked side-by-side in studios at BAF’s purpose-designed facility in the False Creek Flats. Also opening is a new installation from Malina Sintnicolaas in BAF's Garage; this street facing exhibition window displays art to the public 24 hours a day and showcases early-career artists.
The shows open on Thursday, September 9 and close on Saturday, October 23. They are free to the public during BAF Gallery’s opening hours of Tuesday to Saturday, noon to five.
Due to necessary precautions regarding COVID-19, no public reception will be held. Instead, the public is invited to visit the gallery any time during opening hours.
Maria-Margaretta’s practice explores themes of memory, ancestral knowledge and knowledge sharing, as well as Indigenous storytelling, by carefully considering domestic settings and objects. Through her beading, she places emphasis on seemingly banal items, instilling them with agency and claiming them as objects of Indigenous resistance and resilience.
Resistance in the front yard with spitz, cigs, and coffee posits the front yard as a site of great cultural significance. Margaretta asks whether the front yard, as an everyday space instilled with lived experiences, can be a site of cultural learning and communication. (exhibition image by Jake Kimble)
Returning Tenderly Triumphant by North Vancouver-based artist Parvin Peivandi consists of a suite of new sculptures that combine seemingly opposed materials, fusing worn found textiles with sharp metal sheeting and brightly pigmented beeswax.
Through her practice, by working to establish a link between the body and these works, Peivandi creates common ground between her own body and the body of the individual. Embracing ideas of the body as object, the sculptures acknowledge the precarity of individual lives, in particular the lives of people from the Middle East.
With the installation Always Growing, Never Healing, Malina Sintnicolaas attempts to give visual form to the raw, often unseen wounds of post-traumatic stress. The ongoing project combines a twisting formation of double-stitched red wool with cradled, partly hidden ceramic forms.
Emotional trauma takes a heavy toll on the body. Mental health workers, when treating trauma, will often ask a person where they feel the traumatic memory—perhaps as tension in the chest, or shoulders, or as butterflies in the stomach. Sintnicolaas presents the BAF Garage as a similar bodily container, with the crocheted material entangling within.
When: The public is invited to visit the gallery and see the exhibitions anytime during opening hours. The shows will be on view from September 9 until October 23. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 12-5pm.
Where: BAF Gallery | 258 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver BC
Price: Completely free and open to the public!
Website: burrardarts.org
Hashtag: #BurrardArts