Façade Festival 2019: Dana Claxton + Khan Lee

Façade Festival is a week-long, monumental public art project and cultural event that takes place from sunset to midnight every evening from September 8 to 14 on the Georgia Street façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery, above the šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square.

A selection of BC contemporary artists have been commissioned to create 10 stunning, site-specific works of art. Using the technology known as ‘projection mapping,’ the works have been tailored specifically for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s iconic architecture and will be projected over its Georgia Street façade, covering the building with moving, dynamic artwork. Façade Festival is an immersive, large-scale artistic experience that will be shared by tens of thousands of attendees.

The project speaks to the pervasiveness of digital forms in modern life and contemplates the role that new technologies play in contemporary art, while engaging the public in a grand architectural intervention free of charge.

Façade Festival is presented in partnership between Burrard Arts Foundation, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and technical partner Go2 Productions, with support from the City of Vancouver, the Department of Canadian Heritage, QuadReal Property Group, Tourism Vancouver, Viva Vancouver, Can Design, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, and Savoury City Catering & Events.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
DANA CLAXTON + KHAN LEE

DANA CLAXTON

ABOUT THE PROJECT: For Façade Festival 2019, Dana Claxton will cover the Vancouver Art Gallery in traditional Lakota beadwork. Edited to an upbeat, dance soundtrack, the beadwork appears in a rapidly shifting array of vibrant colours and Lakota aesthetics . By presenting an Indigenous art form on a grand scale, Claxton invites the viewer to celebrate indigenous beauty with the festival’s location on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ / sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed exhibiting artist and film/video maker. She works in film, video, photography, single and multi-channel video installation and performance art. Her practice investigates beauty, the body, the socio-political and the spiritual. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and held in public and private collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Art Bank of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. She has received numerous awards including the VIVA Award, the Eiteljorg Fellowship, and most recently the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award. In 2018 the Vancouver Art Gallery hosted a mid-career survey exhibition of her artwork. Dana is Department Head of the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory with the University of British Columbia. Born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan and a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations.

KHAN LEE

ABOUT THE PROJECT: Khan Lee’s projection “Weight of Water” is inspired by a dream from his childhood; a vivid memory of a small child endlessly falling through all kinds of places and objects. All felt weightless as he travelled downward, in slow motion and without fear. “Weight of Water” is a video collage of objects in gravity, produced with new, original footage and video clips collected with Lee’s mobile phone over the last several years. It is cut to an original soundtrack to render familiar gravitational scenarios in and around Vancouver.

At times, we may feel that everything is falling apart: our environment, system, belief, meaning and existence. Many current events pull us down to dark places and fill us with doubt. We try to hold on tight, but often we feel confused and useless. In keeping with this theme of falling, Lee wanted to portray letting go, the process of finding a grace within. Without worry and fear, we find a way to move on.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Khan Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. He studied architecture at Hong-Ik University, before immigrating to Canada to study fine arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Through sculptural and media practices, his work attempts to exhibit results of experimentation with form and process in order to express inherent relationships between material and immaterial content. He is a founding member of the Vancouver-based artist collective Intermission and is presently a member of the Instant Coffee artist collective. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Lee lives and works in Vancouver, BC.