Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists

Exhibition catalogue from Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists at the Belkin (7 January-10 April 2022) curated and edited by Amy Kazymerchyk with essays and interviews by Laiwan, Olivia Michiko Gagnon, Amy Kazymerchyk, Missla Libsekal, Liz Park, Anne Riley, Scott Watson and Rita Wong. The publication presents works by the artist largely from the period between 1980 and 2000 alongside an archive of literary, poetic and journalistic work. Laiwan’s practice questions constructions of self and how those readings sit in relation to languages, taxonomies, images, histories and institutions. Her work unsettles dominant beliefs and structures by holding space for more than one possible meaning, where fixity is not possible. In her roles as artist, writer, educator and activist, Laiwan’s commitment to the necessity of ambiguity has contributed in important ways to Vancouver’s cultural ecology since the early 1980s. Designed by Victoria Lum, this publication offers a platform to contextualize Laiwan’s practice, tracing some of the social, political and personal events that have informed the artist, from her emigration from what was then apartheid Rhodesia to Canada, to her engagement with feminist, queer and race politics in Vancouver, and to her role in artist-run culture and literary, poetic, theoretical, media art and pedagogical discourses.