ART SEEN: What are better questions than Where do we go from here? – Vancouver Sun

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At the architectural, symbolic and conceptual centre of the Vancouver Art Gallery is a text-work by artist Nya Lewis.

Called Commit Us To Memory, the work’s central location in the rotunda on the third floor focusses attention on the Black art experience in Canada. As well, its siting made me think of the historical role the VAG has played as an institution in defining what constitutes art in B.C.

The text-based work is in the exhibition Where do we go from here? which was guest curated by Lewis.

In an interview, she talked about the work and explained how the VAG reached out to her last year to include her in the planning and selection of works for the exhibition.

You can read that story here.

The story is mostly a positive one about a visual arts institution reaching outside to bring in someone with expertise in historical and contemporary Black Canadian art. Maybe best of all, the VAG listened and created a better exhibition as a result.

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But everyone wasn’t in agreement about everything all the time. Not surprisingly, when intelligent people get together, they often have different opinions. During planning for the exhibition, one area of disagreement was over the exhibition title.

Lewis said she challenged the VAG curators about the meaning of Where do we go from here?

For many Black Canadians, it’s like going backwards and posing a question that’s been asked before but never properly addressed.

“To me, it suggests that we haven’t been here before,” she said.

“We’re at this cross roads that for many non-Black people feels new but if you’ve lived thorough the Civil Rights movement, then it isn’t new.”

She said it’s also not new if you haven’t been recognized by an institution despite spending years making work as a Black artist.

The answer to the rhetorical question of the title, she said is “What’s missing? Who is missing?

“It’s not that we need to prove that voices aren’t important. We know that we are. But really we need to challenge the biases that would have them missing in the first place.”

Later on this year, Jan Wade is having a solo show at the VAG. Her vibrant textile-based works were one of the artists I was introduced to in Where do we go from here?

Lewis said that part of her contract with the VAG included requiring the institution to buy and collect work by Black artists during the next five years. As well, it included a commitment to hire someone on permanent staff and to have solo shows by Black artists.

“These were things that I required to work with them so it wasn’t a one-off situation,” she said.

“I left them to do that work.”

Where do we go from here? continues through Black History Month in February until May 30 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

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