Artist On-call
Every day at 2:00 - 3:00 pm, from April 2 to April 13, I will offer on-call services for people who would like to talk about the exhibition, arts, or who just want to have some human contacts in general during the difficult time :)
Contact information: Phone: 604-855-8622; Email: schensart@gmail.com; or through the website.
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Art is essential to our humanity and community but is also the most vulnerable under the capital system, especially at the time of crisis like now. Please consider supporting the artists or the art organizations by purchasing artworks directly from the artists or donating to arts organizations!
Capture Festival Website and Capture Catalogue 2020
Capture Festival: https://capturephotofest.com/exhibitions/blank-occupation/
Capture Catalogue 2020: https://issuu.com/capturephotographyfestival/docs/capture_catalogue_2020-issuu-final
Exhibition Statement
Blank Occupation is an ongoing site-specific investigation using fully- or partially-wrapped architectures as a critical lens to probe into the relationship between the process of urbanization and the population who are purposefully and consequentially marginalized, such as low-income residents, foreign labourers, the homeless, and other groups who are the most vulnerable in the capitalist construct.
Macroscopically, the urban landscape of construction is transient yet everlasting, and such a duality roots on the irreconcilable conflict between the developmental demands of capitalism and people’s survival needs to rely on its systematic exploitation. However, the wrapped structures also resemble and reflect on the micro-communities who are erased, silenced, repressed, diminished, disrupted, and disconnected. Therefore, by examining the life conditions (physical, emotional, cultural, and spiritual) of such populations, I want to rethink and to discuss the priorities of urbanism under the capitalist framework, and ultimately to raise the question: How can we sustain, recharge, and change the system whilst relying on its abuses to survive?
Thus, I’ve purposefully removed the colours from the photo documentations taken through the on-site research. With such removals, not only did I want to emphasize the disconnections between the structures and the people but also to invite the viewers to reimagine the possibilities of the city life. Also, I’ve used the accuracy of poetry as the organizing principle to create photo installations with reclaimed and repurposed objects to echo to each verse that is composed of the vocabularies from intuitions and found on-site. With the visual-poetry installation, I want to explore the boundaries and intersections of the lens language and the literatures to further consider the transdisciplinary possibilities in the visual practice.