#juried

I was recently invited by Lenscratch to create and jury an exhibition. I was extremely honored and excited. I came up with a call for entry and exhibition titled Seeing Is Believing. Here’s the call I wrote:

“Photography is perhaps the most pervasive part of our daily lives. It’s influence on our decisions, beliefs, and perception of the world is unavoidable. This has only been amplified by the constant increase in our interdependence in technology. We even regularly use photographs as a stand-in for our memories. Perhaps seeing is no longer believing, but rather photographing is believing.For this call, show us your most unbelievable and impossible images. Show us your photographic reflections on perception and/or belief. What work do you have that we really need to see to believe?“

I was really excited to see how people would interpret the call. Once all the entries came in, I had a blast going through them and choosing the final selection of photographs. Above I am sharing some of my favorite images from the show, and here is the response I wrote after jurying the exhibition:

“Image-making often has less to do with what we include in the frame, and more to do with what we don’t. Studio photography, for example, relies on an aggregate of scenery and lighting apparatuses we know are there, but cannot see. This often shapes the way we read photographs. If we aren’t lost in the scene presented, photographs invite us to infer what is beyond the immediately visible. The more questions an image leaves unanswered, the more I find myself enjoying it.I especially chose these two images for this very reason. In very different ways, they seem to do the same thing for me. I feel they leave me with more questions than answers. There seems to be just enough space surrounding this baptismal font to make it strangely opulent and yet uncomfortable. Who felt compelled to bring Reba out here, and why?I spent more time interrogating these images’ integrity than I did revelling in them. In my scrutiny, I was hoping to find some detail that would help me trust (or not) the images. Maybe photographing is believing, but only if you’re the one pressing the button. That would explain why we haven’t stopped photographing sunsets.“

A huge thanks to Aline Smithson at Lenscratch for the opportunity! I had such a great time with this. I really hope to do more curation and jurying in the future. Perhaps it’s time to get back to work on Localhost...

Check out the whole exhibition here: SEEING IS BELIEVING

Title: Gingko leaf impressions

Medium: Original block-print carving and acrylic paint

Size: 8.5 x 11 Year: 2025

Last year, my aunt Lily continued a battle with cancer which she survived previously. She died quietly, with support and love of close friends and family. I visited her in hospital and when she was transferred to Yee Hong Peter K. Kwok Hospice in Scarborough. In between these moments of being present with her, with family, and her friends-- I walked grocery stores, neighborhoods, reading, and sketching. On a walk, I came across a gingko tree and picked up and pressed two gingko leaves in my sketchbook. As part of processing grief, I made a carving to experiment printing impressions of this beautiful tree that is part of traditional Chinese medicine- a helper for remembering, learning, and representing resilience. Shamans would carve on the wood of gingko to communicate with the spirit world. Gingko trees demonstrate new growth, despite facing atomic bomb radiation.

A curated international photography exhibition January 17 – February 9, 2019 ​ Portrayals of femininity and masculinity are, without doubt, central to a number of art forms, photography not being an exception. The past few decades have given rise to – often heated – discussions and criticisms of past, recent, and current photographic practices for their lack of reflection on the assumptions,…