May-June 2018
Jinny Yu, Ottawa, ON
Jinny Yu’s work grows out of an inquiry into the medium of painting, as a means of trying to understand the world around us. Denaturalizing the medium and questioning its authority, her project Don’t They Ever Stop Migrating? which addresses themes about migration and resonates with larger political concerns globally, was exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale. It subsequently toured at The Rooms and was acquired by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Her work has been shown widely in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, UK and USA in various venues: Art Mûr (Berlin, 2018), Kunstvrein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Berlin, 2016), Richmond Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2015), Produzentengalerie plan.d. (Düsseldorf, 2014), Ottawa Art Gallery (2014), Pulse New York and Miami Beach (2011, 2014), St. Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax, 2013), Kunst Doc Art Gallery (Seoul, 2012), ISCP Gallery (New York, 2011), McMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton, 2011), Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown, 2011), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa, 2009), Sotheby’s Conduit Street Gallery (London, 2007), Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice, 2006), and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (Kyoto, 2004). She was an artist in residence at the ISCP in New York, Seoul Museum of Art Nanji Art Studios, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Yu, an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, was awarded the Mid-Career Artist Award by Ottawa Arts Council in 2013; Laura Ciruls Painting Award from Ontario Arts Foundation in 2012; and was a finalist for the Pulse Prize New York Prize 2011 and 2014.
During her residency at KIAC, she plans to expand her understanding of migration and border as a larger issue that has been affecting our humanity throughout history. In particular, she plans to look into colonization on the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in as a form of migration and research its affective consequences on its territory and beyond.
Join Jinny for an artist talk in the KIAC Ballroom, Thursday, June 7th at 7:30!
April White is a St. John’s, NL-based artist who works with performance, watercolour, and animation to examine involuntary bodily actions that are commonly seen as vulnerable or embarrassing such as yawning, waking up, sneezing, laughing, and crying. In her recent project Sneeze, funded by ArtsNL and the City of St. John’s, she paints and animates her face stretching, blowing, dripping, and squinting as it endures a sneeze.
April holds a BFA in Visual Arts with concentration in printmaking, performance, and sculpture from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2017, April won the VANL-CARFAC Emerging Artist Award, received the Cox and Palmer Pivotal Point Grant, and showed her installation It’s okay to be tired in the local HOLD FAST Contemporary Arts Festival and Charlottetown, PE’s Art in the Open Festival. She has been part of national and international exhibitions, and has shown her work all across Newfoundland including her 2016 solo exhibition A Day in the Life Of at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery and 2015 solo exhibition Every day I wake up at Eastern Edge’s rOGUE Gallery. April recently participated in the Spark Box Studio Artist Residency in Prince Edward County, ON, has a solo exhibition coming up the English Harbour Arts Centre in NL in July 2018, and will be showing her interactive Yawn animation at Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, NS.
While at KIAC, April will be exploring and questioning the vulnerability of laughing and crying through watercolours, drawings, and short animations.
Stayed tuned for the dates of April’s open studio at Macaulay House.