Post-Mortem Survey for Making Art Work 2020-21
Thank you for participating in the Making Art Work professional development workshop series co-presented by Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Union Gallery, and Agnes Etherington Art Centre. We are looking for feedback from participants of the program to inform future professional development programs. The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. Your answers will be anonymous. Thank you for your time!
Current
Material Memories
Don Kwan
Main Gallery at Modern Fuel
September 13th - November 8th
As a third-generation Chinese Canadian and queer artist, my work is rooted in exploring the intersections of identity, memory, and belonging across time and space. Growing up within the Chinese diaspora, I’ve always been aware of the complex layers of history, tradition, and cultural assimilation that shape our lives. Through my practice, I aim to unravel and reimagine these layers, fostering conversations about identity, cultural heritage, and the experience of being both Chinese Canadian and part of the LGBTQ+ community.
My work often centers on reimagining found objects, materials that carry deep personal and cultural significance. Personal sourced photographs, red envelopes, joss paper, Chinese takeout menus, and other everyday items become the raw materials for my sculptures, installations, and mixed-media works. These objects hold emotional resonance, evoking both the warmth of shared memories and the grief of what has been lost.
The act of stitching, assembling, and repurposing these materials is an expression of healing and connection, a way to reweave fragments of my own history and the broader narrative of the Chinese diaspora. It also provides a way to confront the challenges we face, whether it’s the impact of anti-Asian sentiment, the rise of hate during the COVID-19 pandemic, or the complexities of navigating multiple identities.
At the heart of my work is a desire to create space for reflection and dialogue. My art is both personal and collective, an invitation for others to explore their own connections to memory, identity, and community. Through these pieces, I aim to spark empathy, challenge stereotypes, and contribute to the ongoing process of healing and understanding across generations.
Meet the Artist
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Not Too Salty
Karen Kar Yen Law
State of Flux Gallery at Modern Fuel
September 13th - November 8th
In Not Too Salty, Markham-based artist Karen Kar Yen Law explores Chinese cooking philosophy and tradition through printmaking and construction. Saltiness is one of five essential flavours in traditional Chinese cuisine, along with bitter, spicy, sour, and sweet. In this body of work, the flavour of salty is brought into consideration representationally though Law’s grandmother’s soy marinated egg recipe and literally though the use of soy sauce in one of the works.
In Chinese cuisine, salt rarely stands alone. Instead, it works in harmony with other flavours, grounding or accentuating other flavours. Beyond taste, salt is valued for its power to preserve; it keeps ingredients intact over time. In much the same way, cultural practices such as cooking act as preservatives for culture itself. For diasporic communities, these practices must be actively carried out; culture is not inherited whole, but sustained through continual practice.
Law’s printmaking process is informed by Chinese cookery and food philosophy. One foundational principle of Chinese cookery is the acknowledgment of potential in even the most humble ingredients. Through careful and creative treatments, items that could be discarded as waste are repurposed into ingredients. This fundamental understanding of material has found its way into Law’s printmaking practice where materials are thoughtfully considered and experimental techniques create new opportunities for materials that could be considered waste.
Law creates abstract compositions by cutting egg shaped newsprint stencils that are used throughout artworks.The newsprint stencil is first used and re-used in the monoprinting process. Re-use of inked stencils allows for “ghost print”; a lighter inverse version of the stencil’s form. Typically discarded at this point, Law instead collects, drys, and repurposes the stencils as collage elements in her constructed paintings. The stencil transforms from a tool to medium.
The studio process in creating this work closely mirrors the processes and actions in the kitchen when cooking Chinese cuisine. Both experiences rely heavily on preparation of materials and ingredients. The moment of creation, whether at the wok on a hot stove or at the press bed, happens intuitively and spontaneously based on the materials and ingredients at hand.
Not Too Salty lingers somewhere between preference and possibility. A seasoning adjusted to taste is a reminder that no flavour exists in a fixed state. In the shifting measures of salt, more here and less there, are echoes of how traditions travel, settle, and change. What results is never quite the same, yet still carries the trace of where it came from.
Meet the Artist
Nourishing Nature
Steven Beckly
Window Gallery at Modern Fuel
September 13th - November 8th
Nourishing Nature is a new photographic installation by Tkaronto/Toronto-based artist Steven Beckly in Modern Fuel’s Window Gallery. Captured through Beckly’s intimate lens, it features colourful images of the natural environment alongside a large-scale reproduction of a watercolour of galloping wild horses painted by the artist’s late uncle, who specialized in traditional Southeast Asian painting.
The title of the exhibition refers to Beckly’s Chinese name, 李康然 (Lǐ Kāngrán), which was bestowed to him by his late uncle. Consisting of the characters 康 for “nourishing” and 然 for “nature,” the name signifies a person whose nature is of a nourishing kind.
Images of the natural world unfolding are abundant in Beckly’s photographic practice, while the themes of beauty, interconnection, and metamorphosis continually shape his hands-on, material-driven approach. “Frankenstein” (2024) features an image of rock inhabited by sunburst lichen captured during a residency at the Banff Centre. Printed on handmade paper, its photographic quality is abstracted and transformed by inclusions of lichen embedded during the papermaking process.
Playfully interweaving imagery from Beckly’s and his late uncle’s creative practices, Nourishing Nature considers the symbolic meaning behind Beckly’s given name as well as the act and weight of naming someone or something.
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