We'll Be Boys | Jackson Heseltine
We’ll Be Boys is an ongoing photographic series investigating the bridge between adolescence and adulthood and the simultaneously sacred and forbidden aspects of male identity. Like snapshots from a visual diary, the artist’s subjectivity leads the viewers to question whether these are intentional portraits of others, or a reflection of the artist themselves.
Jackson Heseltine (b. 1998) was born into a suburban working class family in the Lower Mainland and conditioned to think that being a ‘man’ constitutes being tough, heroic, dirty, self righteous, and never showing the slightest sign of weakness. Throughout his teenage years, Heseltine began to question these stereotypes through his interest in the arts and popular culture. Due to the seemingly unique standpoint he took in relation to his peers, who were raised with a similar concept of manliness, his intrigue grew more prominent as he felt a distance grow between himself and those around him. Through the ways popular media chose to highlight masculinity and the performative identities of his friends, his view of being a ‘man’ became further distorted. Heseltine’s heightened interest in the behaviour of the young men around him has led to a large body of work comprised of staged photographs that mimic a moment he experienced amongst his peers.
In connection to the interest of becoming a ‘man’, the notion of growth comes into question when thinking upon the idea of stepping out of adolescence and into adulthood. This transition period plays a key role in the artist’s method of thinking and the way he produces imagery. In We’ll Be Boys, Heseltine documents the turmoil of uncertainty: the subjects portrayed unsure about where to go with their lives and how this uncertainty towards the future reflects their everyday. Trying to fill time without the inherent knowledge of knowing why; living moment to moment without the awareness of what the future holds.
looking for water | simplicio
simplicio villarreal
The misunderstood beauty of being alive
here I find myself
familiarized with the unfamiliar
stumbling upon the things I was not supposed to be
like waking up in a house that is not home
thirsty for a glass of water
without windows, without light
without knowing where the glasses are, or the water.
no light leaking from anywhere on the walls
returning to the same places
stumbling upon the same ghosts
stepping in and out of the conscious
drifting gently with the sway of the lost
thirsty for a glass of water
I find none
Hvor Jeg Har Havn (Where I am Harboured) | Mikhela Greiner
Hvor Jeg Har Havn | Mikhela Greiner
Hvor Jeg Har Havn (where I am harboured) is a series of large format (4×5) and digital images exploring the ways in which the body communicates; both to those around us – specifically within the context of family, as we move through spaces and interact with each other, but also in how emotion and the state of our mental health tends to manifest itself physically, how our bodies communicate to us intimately, and affect our movement.
Mikhela (b. 1996) is a Norwegian-Canadian visual artist working primarily in photography. Her work explores ideas of identity, femininity, and family, often centred around the body through movement and gesture as a means of communicating.
Marija Kanavin
Marija Kanavin
We are born and we die and in between we lay trails of stories within the web of our existence. I seek to reflect upon the stories of the ones that came before me. Through my own experiences and relationships with the people, places and objects directly related to the traces recorded through my family tree I consider my connection to my family, their experiences and how they have influenced me.
Marija Rebekka Kanavin Gutans (b. 1996) is a Norwegian and Latvian visual artist, born and raised in Norway. Her practice explores themes of identity, relationships, memory and history. Through photography she considers the way she learns, looks and reflects upon our past, contemporary moment and coming changes.
Music in my Eyes I Silas Ng
“Music in My Eyes,” investigates how the term sound can be experienced as a deaf person. This work is a response to music, specifically classical music, and the difference between how those who use sign language and those who use spoken language, who can also hear the music, grasp the idea or emotion behind the music. The term sound is understood in sign language by using the sign on-ear to explain the sound can be heard with the ear; however, how it is interpreted as an actual sound can only be understood by people who live in the world of sound. It does not mean the deaf people will not be able to experience sound or they lack their own musical culture. Deaf culture enjoys music that involves specific instruments, like a drum or electric music from dubstep, percussive instruments that can be felt as much as they can be heard. The music is played at a very loud volume, and the high decibel sound waves create vibrations that people feel traveling into their bodies as musical energy.
Silas Ng (b.1997) is an emerging artist based on the unceded territories of Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. His photography and multi-disciplinary works explore his life experience and identities as Deaf Canadian-born Chinese to discover how his life merged into three different worlds.
sik teng mm sik gong (pardon my chinese) | Gloria Wong
Gloria Wong
“sik teng mm sik gong (pardon my chinese)” consists of a series of large format 4×5 photographs that are part of an investigation into Asian-Canadian diasporic identity and the ways that it manifests through familial relationships, domestic spaces and objects. This work takes up aspects of the everyday to visualize the things “in between” that make up this identity: between care and neglect, sterility and warmth, belonging and alienation. The title of the work refers to a common Cantonese phrase in the Hong Kong-Canadian diaspora about first-generation immigrants who can understand parts of the language but don’t know how to speak it. Through a combination of portraits and still lifes, these photographs attempt to portray the complexities and nuances of this Asian-Canadian identity, while being conscious of overt stereotypical signifiers.
Gloria Wong (b. 1998) is an emerging artist based on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice primarily uses photography to explore the complexities and nuances of East Asian diasporic identities and the ways they are shaped by different relationships-whether between people, their environments or objects.
This project has been awarded the Chick Rice Award for Excellence in Photography
