“Letting go…”
Lani Maestro in conversation with Michael Fernandes
Sat Mar 25, 2023 | 11 AM–1 PM
Image: Courtesy of the Artist
In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard
–Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Join artists Lani Maestro and Michael Fernandes for an impromptu, unrehearsed conversation, moderated by guest curator Makiko Hara. Both Maestro and Fernandes will be presenting on Zoom and Hara will be moderating in-person.
Their dialogue will begin with a “readymade,” an image that Maestro sent Fernandes after a recent accident, and the two artists will converse spontaneously with no predetermined direction. This performative lecture will become a meditation on narrative storytelling, and how explorations of the “body” can become loci of liberation. The lecture will be followed by a curator’s tour led by Hara at the Gallery’s public art space, Offsite.
This program is in conjunction with Lani Maestro’s neon installation, No Pain Like This Body (2010/2022), at Offsite. No Pain Like This Body is a direct response to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. The work was the centrepiece of her rain (2010), an exhibition curated by Makiko Hara at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, formerly located on Hastings Street. The work is a text-based, ruby-red neon sculpture that spells out “No pain like this body,” situated adjacent to another sculpture that echoes “No body like this pain,” creating tension and intimacy. Through her minimalist visual language, Maestro addresses the complexities of human nature and dignity to reveal the conditions of the social, cultural and political realities of everyday life.
Taking on new resonances wherever it is situated, No Pain Like This Body has been exhibited at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, (2010–11); the Philippine Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2019). The work returns to Vancouver after twelve years to reflect on that original time and place, and to resituate itself in a city altered by post-Olympic urban development and the COVID-19 pandemic.
REGISTRATION
Free for Members or with Admission. Space is limited and registration is required.
Watch the talk online
The talk will be livestreamed online and a recording will be available here and Vimeo the following week. The talk will be presented on Zoom and streamed live to the Gallery’s Facebook account here »
Questions? Submit them during the Zoom presentation using the Q&A function. You can also engage with your fellow attendees and panelists during the event using the Chat function.
New to Zoom? Learn how to register and attend a webinar here »
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Lani Maestro was born in Manila where she pursued her art studies at the University of the Philippines. In 1989, she received an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax. NSCAD’s avant-garde temperament sparked Maestro’s interest outside the confines of art as mere craft into an unconventional practice that included a theoretical and critical view of artistic production.
In 1990, she co-founded and edited with artist Stephen Horne Harbour Magazine of Art and Everyday Life, a journal of artists and theorist’s writings and artworks. Maestro represented the Philippines at the 57th Venice Biennale in Italy in 2017. Other biennial exhibitions include Sydney, Istanbul, Cuba, Sharjah, Shanghai, Brisbane and Busan. In Canada, her work has been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, Powerplant, the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Université du Québec Art Gallery as well as various independent and artist run spaces. Maestro is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Award for outstanding contribution by a Canadian artist in 2012. She received an honorary doctorate (DFA), honoris causa from NSCAD in 2018.
Michael Fernandes is a Canadian experiential artist and art educator who uses familiar, even banal materials to ask the viewer to confront the boundary between daily life and art. Fernandes is an instructor in intermedia at NASCAD University. Fernandes has exhibited extensively in Canada, notably at the Blackwood Gallery, Mercer Union, the Power Plant and YYZ (Toronto); The Biennale de Montreal, the Dunlop Art Gallery; the National Gallery of Canada and SAW Gallery. In 2020, he received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Makiko Hara is an award-winning independent curator, lecturer, writer and art and cultural consultant based in Vancouver. From 2007 to 2013, she was Chief Curator/Deputy Director of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. In addition, she has worked with many visual artists on a variety of projects as an independent curator, including Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto (, 2009); AIR YONAGO, Tottori Geijyu Art Festival, Yonago, Japan (, 2014–15); Fictive Communities Asia – Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama, Japan, (2014); and Rock Paper Scissors: Cindy Mochizuki, Yonago City Museum of Art, Tottori, Japan, (2018). Hara was appointed Guest Curator of the 2014 Koganecho Bazaar, and in 2017, she was invited to join the advisory team at the International Exchange Center, Akita University of Art, Japan. Hara co-founded Pacific Crossings, a British Columbia-–based curatorial platform, in 2018. Pacific Crossings has initiated and organized numerous conversations, residencies and both online and offline cultural exchanges across the Pacific. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020, Hara founded My Kitchen Anthropology Museum, where she organized solo exhibitions by Hank Bull and Marcia Crosby. Hara received the Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize in 2020.