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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
Open from Tuesday to
Sunday 12 pm → 6 pm

Admission always free
ArchiveExhibition
26 May 23until3 Sep 23

Dionne Lee

Ratios

CAG Façade and offsite at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station

Dionne Lee, Ratios (detail), 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

The work of Dionne Lee engages closely with photographic methodologies to pursue forms of knowledge counter to the imperialist assumptions that underlie the conventions of North American landscape photography. Central to Lee’s practice is the body’s experience of the world at a close distance, a scale that she privileges in her work as an access point for understanding the relationship between people and land.

In Ratios, displayed as a trio of photographs at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station and a series of successively darkening photocopies on CAG’s façade, Lee mutually implicates small rocks and her own hand as tools to measure each other. Invoking the practice in geological survey photographs to include small objects in frame to indicate scale, these works stage by proxy the relationship between human bodies and land, and the asymmetry of their impacts on one another.

Dionne Lee: Ratios is presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program — InTransit BC.

Biography

Dionne Lee is a visual artist working in photography, collage, sculpture, and video. Her work explores power and personal history in relation to the American landscape, and interrogates historical narratives that exist within photographic representations of land and place. Lee received her MFA from California College of the Arts. She has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Feria Material, Mexico City; New Orleans Museum of Art; Aperture Foundation, New York; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the San Francisco Arts Commission, among others. Lee was a 2022 Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation and is a 2021–2023 Artist-in-Residence with Unseen California.

CAG’s façade with Dionne Lee’s Ratios across eight street-facing windows. The artworks each depict a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints, and from left to right appear successively darker across the series.
A pair of windows featuring a pair of images depicting a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints. Both images are legible, with the right image slightly darker than the left one.
A pair of windows featuring a pair of images depicting a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints. Both images are darker than is optimum, with the right image darker than the left one.
A pair of windows featuring a pair of images depicting a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints. Both images are significantly darker than is optimum, with the right image darker than the left one. The image is difficult to make out.
A pair of windows featuring what look like black smudges or shadows. The right image is slightly darker than the left one.
A frontal view of a SkyTrain station with two photos in its windows. The first photo depicts a rock with bits of white tape arranged in an oval around its perimeter. The second depicts the same rock with bits of white tape dotting its surface.
A frontal view of a SkyTrain station with one photo in its window. The photo depicts a rock on a blue tarp with a hand drawn on its surface and bits of white tape arranged in an oval around its perimeter.
A diagonal view of a SkyTrain station with three photos in its windows. The photos each depict a rock on a blue tarp with bits of white tape arranged either in an oval around its perimeter or on its surface. A hand is drawn on one rock’s surface.

Documents

Program guidepdf2mbExhibition materialpdf198kbLarge print exhibition materialpdf1mb

Talks & Events

EventOpening ReceptionSummer 2023
25 May 23·7:00 PMuntil9:00 PM
EventIn ConversationGabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Dionne Lee & Sesemiya with Lorna Brown
27 May 23·12:00 PM
A stone with the outline of a handprint is displayed on a blue tarped surface.EventCuratorial Tourwith Godfre Leung
6 Jun 23·6:00 PM
EventSaturday SessionKarice Mitchell on Dionne Lee
17 Jun 23·12:00 PM
Paper cutouts and a strawberry hang from thin metal wires.EventCuratorial Tourwith Matthew Hyland
11 Jul 23·6:00 PM
CAG’s façade with Dionne Lee’s Ratios across eight street-facing windows. The artworks each depict a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints, and from left to right appear successively darker across the series.
A pair of windows featuring a pair of images depicting a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints. Both images are legible, with the right image slightly darker than the left one.
A pair of windows featuring a pair of images depicting a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints. Both images are darker than is optimum, with the right image darker than the left one.
A pair of windows featuring a pair of images depicting a hand with small white pebbles placed on its joints. Both images are significantly darker than is optimum, with the right image darker than the left one. The image is difficult to make out.
A pair of windows featuring what look like black smudges or shadows. The right image is slightly darker than the left one.
A frontal view of a SkyTrain station with two photos in its windows. The first photo depicts a rock with bits of white tape arranged in an oval around its perimeter. The second depicts the same rock with bits of white tape dotting its surface.
A frontal view of a SkyTrain station with one photo in its window. The photo depicts a rock on a blue tarp with a hand drawn on its surface and bits of white tape arranged in an oval around its perimeter.
A diagonal view of a SkyTrain station with three photos in its windows. The photos each depict a rock on a blue tarp with bits of white tape arranged either in an oval around its perimeter or on its surface. A hand is drawn on one rock’s surface.