Welcome to ReIssue Digestif, a bi-weekly-ish round-up of events on our radar. All times in PST.
If you are BC- or AB-based and have an exhibition, event or call-for-submissions posting to submit for consideration in the next Digestif (April 16–30th), email details to editor@reissue.pub
Her Presence (Womanhood in Ukraine): Katya Lesiv, Katia Motyleva, Anya Tsaruk
CSA Space, #5–2414 Main St, Vancouver BC
April 3–May 1, access via Pulp Fiction Books, store hours here
Opening: Wednesday April 3, 6–9pm
Free
This group exhibition offers a nuanced and critical exploration of the experience of Ukrainian women: the relationships between mothers, daughters, and sisters and the significant ways in which these have been affected during the invasion of Ukraine. Katya Lesiv finds strength and empowerment during the initial days of the invasion in her motherhood experience and this deep sense of presence becomes her main source of support during that unprecedented time. Anya Tsaruk reflects on the changing family roles that ensued upon her mother’s arrival in Berlin from the war-torn country. Katerina Motylova’s work investigates grief, highlighting the pivotal role her sister played as a source of solace when she lost her home and parents to the occupation. Curated by Alina Senchenko.
DIM Cinema: The Motion of the Image
The Cinematheque, 1131 Howe St, Vancouver BC
Wednesday April 3, 7pm
Tickets here
Guest programmer Mena El Shazly presents six experimental video works made as part of a Cairo Video Festival production workshop led by writer and film director of Phantom Beirut, Ghassan Salhab. The theme of Salhab’s workshop was “The Motion of the Image,” with each participating artist given the resources to discuss, develop, and produce a piece responding to the questions of moving-image creation. What are the images that we produce, invoke, and watch — and that watch and monitor us? We are at once the creators, the producers, the actors, the extras, the witnesses, and the audience of this spectacle. What, then, is this movement of images that haunts the world and threatens it more than ever?
Gregor Craigie: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis
Alice Mackay Room, Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, 350 W Georgia St, Vancouver BC
Thursday April 4, 7–8pm
Free
In his new book Our Crumbling Foundation, CBC journalist Gregor Craigie examines Canada’s urgent housing crisis while offering real-life solutions from cities around the world. His urgent book provides hope for a housing system that feels broken beyond repair. Craigie will be in conversation with journalist Michelle Cyca and see why this book is being called “a must read, not just for policy wonks but for anyone affected by a housing crisis that knows no bounds.”
To Be Belligerent//To Commit To Memory//To Live Without Fear
Gallery Gachet, 9 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
April 4–30, Tuesday–Saturday 12–6pm
Opening: Thursday April 11, 7–9pm
Free
This exhibition marks the 25th anniversary of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), featuring images and ephemera from the organization’s archive. Materials presented address the arc of the organization’s successes, failings, impact and “being” within and outside the DTES. Through a range of images embodying collective action, intimacy, state violence, commemoration, and the inherent politics tied to one’s being in relation their position and orientation in this world, this exhibition presents a dissident history of the DTES and problematizes an inflammatory understanding of its residents present in our collective, individual and institutional imagination.
Yet much in you is still worm… (A Performative Talk)
Nanaimo Art Gallery, 150 Commercial St, Nanaimo BC
Friday April 5, 7pm
Free
Artist and writer Marina Roy gives a talk which weaves together thoughts and stories around ecology and art, bitumen and soil, with the worm as the main entangled character. Roy’s work is featured in NAG’s current exhibition Stories that animate us. Her recent book Queuejumping (Information Office/Art Metropole, 2022), uses the letter Q as device to investigate such interwoven issues as the “invention” of language and art, the shifting nature of sovereignty, feminist utopias, ecological devastation, and animal extinction.
Fracture/Repair
Artspeak, 233 Carrall St, Vancouver BC
April 5–June 7, Wednesday–Saturday 12–6pm
Opening Reception: Friday April 5, 6–9pm
Free
Featuring work by Nadia Huggins, Andrew Jackson, Renluka Maharaj, Junior Sealy, and Ricardo Miguel Hernandez, Fracture/Repair unfolds as a transcultural examination of diasporic relationships to land across the Caribbean, framing ancestral and contemporary Caribbean landscapes as a backdrop for discourse concerning the politics of location, dislocation, displacement, and dispossession. Where histories and ongoing practices of exploitation, colonization, imperialism, and resource extraction pillar cultural and spiritual memory, a unique perspective of geography and nationhood emerges — planting a visual language of place-making, care, participation, love, and critique. Curated by Forgotten Lands.
Skoden Indigenous Film Festival
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
Saturday April 6 and Sunday April 7
Schedule and tickets here
‘Skoden’ is an Indigenous slang term meaning, ‘Let’s go then!’ Organized and facilitated by co-instructors Kathleen Mullen and Carr Sappier and their students enrolled in CA 389: Selected Topics in the Fine and Performing Arts, Skoden Indigenous Film Festival is an annual two-day student-led film festival that features exclusively Indigenous filmmakers and creatives from across Canada, presented in 5 thematically different Programs, each ending with a Q&A session.
PULP
Nelson Museum Archives & Gallery, 502 Vernon St, Nelson BC
April 6–July 27, Tuesday–Saturday 10am–4pm
Admission here (Free Thursdays 4–8pm)
PULP is the latest iteration in a series of medium-centric group exhibitions, focused on a common theme — in this case, paper — that highlights each artist’s interpretation of the medium. Featuring works by Gathie Falk, Mia Feuer, Susan Andrew Grace, Edward Poitras, Miya Turnbull, Badanna Zack, and Miya Turnbull.
Go Home Yuppie Scum: Preston Buffalo
SUM Gallery, #425-268 Keefer St, Vancouver BC
April 11–June 6, Tuesday–Saturday 12–6pm
Opening: Thursday April 11, 6–8pm
Free
Taking its title from graffiti that appeared on empty/sold Vancouver houses and lots in the 1980s as part of the local anti-gentrification movement, Go Home Yuppie Scum is an irreverent take on the “Welcome to Vancouver” View-Master reels popular in the 1960s to 1980s, which featured 3D images of Vancouver landmarks as a means of enticing tourists to visit. Buffalo creates a series of stereoscopic reels that showcase the city from a very different perspective: crumbling, graffiti-adorned structures in the Downtown Eastside, disused rail lines, and thickets of overgrown flora, all eerily devoid of inhabitants.
ReIssue Year 3 Anthology Launch & Silent Auction Fundraiser
UNIT/PITT, 2954 W 4th Ave, Vancouver BC
Friday April 12, 6–9pm
Free
ReIssue celebrates it’s Year 3 Anthology with a launch event, featuring our first annual Silent Auction Fundraiser! Guest edited by writer Kiel Torres, the Year 3 Anthology features contributions by Alexa Bunnell, Rhys Edwards, Hamish Hardie, Alexis Hogan, Steff Hui Ci Ling, Tiziana La Melia, Hannah Möller, Dani Neira, Ryley O’Byrne, Kara Stanton, Andrew Witt, Coco Zhou, and the 2024 Art Writing Award Winner, Sarah Wong. Anthologies will be available for purchase, while a silent auction of three fabulous prize bundles will take place until 8:30pm. Masks will be required for this event.
Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading: Liz Howard
SFU Seagul Building, 500 Granville St, Vancouver BC
Saturday April 13, 7–9pm
Free
The second annual Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading series features poet Liz Howard with guests Selina Boan, Sophie McCall, and June Scudeler. Howard’s work explores Anishinaabe ways of knowing, cosmology, ecology, and the liberatory potentials of language as art. Born and raised on Treaty 9 territory in Northern Ontario of mixed settler and Anishinaabe heritage, she currently lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her first collection, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent (McClelland & Stewart, 2015), won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos (McClelland & Stewart, 2021), was shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Trillium Poetry Prize. Light refreshments will be provided.
Calls
Wikipedia Scholar, The Black Arts Centre, Rungh Magazine, UBC, & KPU
Apply now (program on until end of April)
Call for 3D Artwork, North Van Arts (North Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: April 2
Call for Submissions (Sound of the Sun, Volume III), UNIT/PITT (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: April 5
Call for Submissions (2025 Deer Lake Artist Residencies), Shadbolt Centre & Burnaby Art Gallery (Burnaby, BC)
Deadline: April 8
Call for Submissions (QAF Community Art Show), Queer Arts Festival & James Black Gallery (Vancouver, BC)
Deadline: April 18
Call for Submissions (Summer Group Exhibition), Langley Arts Council (Langley, BC)
Deadline: June 5
Call for Submissions (Photography Group Exhibition), Langley Arts Council (Langley, BC)
Deadline: June 12