Andi Icaza-Largaespada
CAG Façade
Andi Icaza-Largaespada, 2018. Courtesy the artist
Andi Icaza-Largaespada is the winner of the second CAG Prize for an emerging artist selected from the graduating class of the BFA program at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.
Typical of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice, a new speculative photographic panorama is presented across our Nelson Street façade. Raising questions surrounding ethics and ecology, the image grows out of recent research into Nicaragua’s rapidly expanding mining industry and its connection to Vancouver’s own history of resource extraction, occupation and expansion. Icaza-Largaespada’s subtle insertion of an enigmatic figure pictured within the manipulated landscape suggests a symbolic defiance against the continued colonial exploits of a Vancouver-based mining company in Nicaragua. Shrouded in a golden material, the character at once surveys the scene and refuses our gaze, a quiet manifestation of implied resistance. As described by Unangax scholar Eve Tuck, “resistance is not simply bodies or events articulated against power, but is diffuse, plastic, ungraspable.”
Curated by Julia Lamare, with assistance from Kimberly Phillips
The CAG Prize is generously supported by the Peter Szeto Investment Group, BMO Nesbitt Burns.
Biography
Andi Icaza-Largaespada graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BFA in Visual Arts in 2017. She has recently exhibited at La Rizoma, Managua (2016 and 2018) and School of Contemporary Arts, Vancouver (2016). Group exhibitions include New Generation Photography Award, OCAD Onsite, Toronto (2018). Nominations and awards include Scotiabank’s New Generation Award Longlist (2018), Contemporary Art Gallery Prize (2017), The Philip B. Lind Award Longlist (2017), BMO First Art! Nominee (2017), AIMIA/AGO Photography Scholarship Honourary Award (2016), SFU Thanabe/Thorne Visual Art Award (2016) and Canon Prize for Best Photographic Portfolio (2015). In Nicaragua, she co-runs La Rizoma Cultural Centre and participates in feminist, ecological and Indigenous rights activism and advocacy.
