Centre A Presents New Exhibitions on Artistic and Curatorial Labour

Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is pleased to announce its two upcoming exhibitions that negotiate language, resistance, and artistic and curatorial labour: Speech Acts: Zainub Verjee, an exhibition by the multidisciplinary artist, curator, writer, activist, and arts administrator Zainub Verjee, and This space is intentionally left blank (nothing is more important than independence and freedom), an installation by the Centre A curatorial team. Both exhibitions will run from June 30 to August 28, 2021. How do we perform action? Do words act? Do we act words? When do words fail us? These questions have always occupied Zainub Verjee’s work, which navigates the relationship between reality and language: the ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language, and the relation between language and other cultural factors in a society. Speech Acts: Zainub Verjee is an excerpt of Verjee’s practice where language becomes the materiality of the form and its meaning. It represents her sustained and long-term engagement with the issues of resistance, activism, artist’s labour, and discourse making—speech, listening and writing. The works in this exhibition also engage with how vocabularies are appropriated and redeployed into circulation. In the current times when there are explicit attempts to direct the discourse and stifling dialogue that reduces the social into a binary, how does one confront the methods and behaviours of speech? This exhibition foregrounds the relationship between language and voice, action and words, and the tension underlying these contestations. This space is intentionally left blank (nothing is more important than independence and freedom) grapples with how, within the public economic sphere, the common, result-driven curatorial strategies of institutions can result in an excess of immaterial exertion and refuse. By repurposing pre-existing structures from our previous exhibition and negotiating the demand to create, we invite you to join us in contesting this cycle of delivery, contemplating the meaning of production, and reclaiming this space. The title of this exhibition-installation, a pivotal quote from the novel The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, asserts the supremacy of self-liberation and cheekily highlights the conceptual power of nothing. Visitor Information Hours of operation: Wednesday to Saturday, 12 PM – 6 PM* *Subject to change as per COVID-19-related protocols. Closed on July 1, 2021. Address: 268 Keefer Street (Sun Wah Centre) Unit 205 (2nd floor) Vancouver, BC V6A 1X5 Accessing the gallery: Due to the Sun Wah Centre’s security measures, please ask the security guard to let you into the building. If you have trouble or require assistance, call Centre A at + 1 (604) 683-8326. The gallery is accessible by escalator and elevator. COVID-19 protocols: Masks or face coverings are mandatory during your visit, and we encourage visitors to sanitize their hands before and after their visit. Masks and hand sanitizer are also available onsite.