While the Student Art Sale at Emily Carr ends today (December 7), there’s another art sale going on to take note of if you’re looking to collect, spruce up your home, or give a gift of a work of art—while supporting important community causes.
The Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, also known as Centre A and located in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown, has launched its Firecracker fundraiser to usher in the new year.
In many Asian cultures, firecrackers symbolize the power to scare off evil spirits and demonic forces on special occasions. This particularly powerful Firecracker seeks to empower artists and ward off the ongoing wave of anti-Asian discrimination that has arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For instance, Montreal-based artist Karen Tam’s Attack of the Kung Fu Girls is part of her series of cut-outs inspired by 1970s martial arts movies from Hong Kong. This particular image is drawn from Lo Wei’s 1973 film Tie Wa, about a phalanx of women who prove that they are a deadly force to be reckoned with.
This is particularly timely as a national report found that 70 percent of anti-Asian attacks in B.C. during the pandemic have involved female victims.
While 50 percent of the proceeds will go to youth-oriented programming at Centre A in 2021, the remaining half will go to the artists during this challenging time period for the art world.
The sale will be available until February.
The first series, Pow! 1, offers works by visual artists Claire Yow, Bernadette Phan, Christine Cheung, Lam Wong, Patrick Cruz, Parvin Peivandi, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Alvin Luong, Hank Bull, Karen Tam, Samson Young, and Pixy Liao (whose work was the opening exhibition at Centre A’s online gallery launched in April).
New works will be unveiled and added with the Pow! 2 and 3 series in the weeks to come.
Full details are available at Centre A’s Firecracker website.
