Lotus L. Kang

Unfolding across sculpture, installation, drawing, and photography, the practice of Lotus L. Kang takes up questions of “becoming” on expansive terms. Known for her use of unstable, continuously sensitive materials and a visual language that melds structural, organic and entropic forms, Kang’s dexterously layered works explore self and environment as contingent, continuous and inseparable. 

At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Kang presents her most recent installation, *In Cascades*, a scaffold of industrial steel joists sheathed with lengths of unfixed photographic films. Presented in a palette of visceral hues, these films — described by the artist as “skins” — remain sensitive to their environment, developing over the course of the exhibition as they’re exposed to the light and humidity of the gallery. A series of intimate sculptures punctuate the installation, provisional, often changeable forms in arrangements that nod to processes of reproduction, exchange, inheritance, and transformation.

Alongside *In Cascades*, Kang will present a suite of new public-facing works on the façade of the gallery’s Nelson Street building and at nearby Yaletown-Roundhouse Station.

*In Cascades* is co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London, and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver.

#### Biography
Lotus L. Kang (b. 1985, Toronto) lives and works in New York. Her recent exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Mercer Union SPACE, Toronto; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY;  the 2021 New Museum Triennial, New York; SculptureCenter, New York; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; and Oakville Galleries. In 2022, Kang was the inaugural resident of Horizon Art Foundation, Los Angeles and was also in residence at Triangle Arts Association, New York. She has also been artist-in-residence at Rupert Vilnius; The Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, Alberta; and Interstate Projects, Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.


Long earth tone sheets of film of various colours suspended from metal ceiling beams. A small box supporting three fruit is visible between two perpendicular sheets of film.

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In Cascades

Trinh T. Minh-ha

*Reassemblage* (1982), Trinh T. Minh-ha’s first film, is a classic of postcolonial cinema. Set in rural Senegal, the film introduces Trinh’s career-long methodology of “speaking nearby.” Throughout the work, Trinh scrutinizes the presumption of anthropological and documentary filmmakers to speak about or on behalf of their subjects, a critical lens that she also extends to “the missionary, the Peace Corps volunteer, the tourist, and last but not least at myself as onlooker.”

Cinematic techniques themselves are the subjects of *Reassemblage*. Treating film editing as a language, Trinh composes a rhythmic montage in which the repetition and discontinuity of audio-visual footage cohere into a new filmic genre that lies between poetry and theory, the essay and the anti-essay.

#### Biography
Born in Vietnam, Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer and music composer. She is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School in the departments of Gender & Women’s Studies and of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Spanning nearly four decades, Trinh’s complex, theoretical and poetic practice includes moving image, writing, musical composition, installation, and teaching. She dedicates her practice to questioning systems of knowledge, representation and experience related to cultural identity and memory, and has made profound contributions to filmmaking as well as to the fields of postcolonial and feminist studies. Retrospectives and surveys of her films have been presented widely, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Secession, Vienna; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, among many, many others. In 2018, M+ Museum of Visual Culture, West Kowloon Cultural Council, Hong Kong, in collaboration with ICA London and Hong Kong Arts Centre, presented a retrospective of Trinh T. Minh-ha during Art Basel Hong Kong. She has participated in the 2012 Contemporary Art Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo; the 1987, 1992 and 2022 Whitney Biennials; Documenta 11; the Guangzhou Triennial (2008); and the Shanghai (2004), Busan (2004), and Kyoto (2003) Art Biennales.


A photo of a Senegalese woman looking to her right with one arm outstretched and her chin in her other hand.

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Reassemblage

We’re working on our upcoming exhibitions. Check back soon! [Visit our archive](/exhibitions-and-events/archive/all) to see past exhibitions and events.

Closed for installation

Please join us to celebrate CAG's fall 2023 exhibitions, *Lotus L. Kang: In Cascades* and *Trinh T. Minh-ha: Reassemblage*.

All ages welcome. Cash bar.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

Edge of a suspended sheet of film visible on the left of the photo, in a white room in front of a partially unfolded patterned tatami mat with silver discs arranged in a curved line on its surface.

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Fall 2023

Opening Reception

Join CAG’s Curator Godfre Leung for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

A close-up photo of a Senegalese woman facing the camera with a neutral expression.

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with Godfre Leung

Curatorial Tour

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In October, we welcome Coco Zhou to speak on the work of Lotus L. Kang. 

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Coco Zhou is a writer and cultural worker living on the unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She comes to these lands via Shenzhen, China. The affective intensity of being located in broader historical patterns, and the ellipses, gap, and singularities within their lines of continuity, compel much of her thinking and writing. She was awarded the Canadian Art editorial residency in 2021 and holds an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center.

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Coco Zhou Headshot.jpg

Coco Zhou on Lotus L. Kang

Saturday Session

Join CAG’s Executive Director Matthew Hyland for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

Three fruit wrapped in green tissue sit on folded tatami mats wrapped in translucent plastic, on a concrete floor in front of suspended film sheets that curl as they touch the ground.

Exhibitions

Talks & Events