CAG Reads

Gabi Dao and Christian Vistan present Paul Maheke and Tommy Orange

Online via Zoom

A photograph of a large mirror placed outside. A drawing of a person's face is attached to the top of the mirror. The reflection on the mirror shows people getting haircuts.

We are pleased to announce our latest installment of CAG Reads, a book club where artists invite us to read alongside them. Each month an artist proposes a text for our collective reading pleasure, culminating in a virtual hangout where the artist leads a wide-ranging discussion grounded in their chosen reading material.

This October, CAG Reads will be hosted by Gabi Dao and Christian Vistan.

Gabi Dao is an artist and co-organizer at Duplex, a DIY project space and studio collective based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her interdisciplinary practice insists on counter-memory, intimacy, hyphenation, multiple truths, and blurred temporalities through the pursuit of sculpture, installation, moving image, and sound. She has shown her work throughout Canada and internationally, with recent exhibitions at Audain Gallery SFU, Images Festival and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Christian Vistan is an artist originally from the peninsula known as Bataan, Philippines. His work and projects have been presented locally and internationally at Artspeak, Centre A, and Nanaimo Art Gallery in Canada; mild climate and Atlanta Contemporary in the United States; and Kamias Triennial in the Philippines. He lives and works the unceded ancestral territories of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) and sc̓əwaθən məsteyəxʷ (Tsawwassen) Nations.

Dao and Vistan have chosen two readings, both available online. The Year I Stopped Making Art. Why the art world should assist artists beyond representation: in solidarity (2020) is an open letter written by the artist Paul Maheke at the onset of the pandemic, one that questions the precarity many artists must face by participating within the art system.

Their second selection, also inspired by the pandemic, is The Team (2020), a short story written by Pulitzer-finalist and MacDowell Fellow Tommy Orange.

Please follow these links to read The Year I Stopped Making Art. Why the art world should assist artists beyond representation: in solidarity and The Team for free online.

Trigger Warning: There are references to incidents of sexual and physical violence and abuse towards racialized bodies in Paul Maheke’s text.