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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250926
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DTSTAMP:20251022T190754Z
CREATED:20250827T035513Z
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UID:10000363-1758844800-1763164799@albertaprintmakers.com
SUMMARY:The Integrity of a Story by Jenie Gao
DESCRIPTION:About the Exhibition\n“My mother lives in a rural area of Kansas\, threatened in recent years by encroaching suburbanization. Since 2024\, my spouse and I have taken turns visiting my mother to help her with house repairs and to assert our presence to overly inquisitive realtors and developers eager to displace older residents. \nThe centrepiece of this exhibition is a TV tray table in my mother’s home\, where we share our meals. In this modest and intimate setting\, my mother steps into one of her most profound roles as our family’s knowledge keeper. Her stories—simultaneously historical\, allegorical\, almost mythic\, and sometimes prophetic—come alive. \nIn one story\, my mother explains how she sees herself\, brave and capable of doing things alone. When she was a child in Taiwan\, her family rented her a third-story bedroom separate from their first floor flat. Every night\, she had to ascend the staircase outside into the mountains under the watchful eyes of mountain lions. \nIn another story\, my mother shares that the character for Yuàn 苑 in her name means “garden of the immortals\,” or “the deer garden where the emperor’s sons practice their hunting.” As I admire the poetry of her name\, my mother laughs at the irony of her family naming her after imperials and celestial beings who would have never troubled themselves over the problems of working class mortals. Her family by then had suffered repeated losses of language and home under multiple occupying governments\, including the Japanese and the Chinese Nationalists. Years later after our family immigrated\, my grandparents would lose their house again when the US government eminent domained their neighbourhood for a freeway project. \nThe Deer Garden woodblock features a Formosan Sika Deer and Clouded Leopard in a continuous\, cyclical chase. The woodcut is designed to resemble a piece of hand-carved jade\, with the final block inlaid into the surface of a TV tray table. \nThe works in this exhibition capture moments when my mother’s stories are suspended between a child’s imagination and an elder’s recollection\, one in which there might truly have been lions in Taiwan’s mountains\, or perhaps an elusive Clouded Leopard before habitat loss caused them to die out and disappear.  \nThe mountain lions of my mother’s childhood ended up being feral cats. The white-tailed deer my mother watches from her window are in the heart of the rural Americana Midwest. Yet for a moment\, as she passes her stories to my stewardship and safekeeping\, the common becomes mythic. \nThe works in this exhibition are part of my ongoing series called The Negotiation Table\, in which I take hand-carved woodblocks and transform them into sites of negotiation. This transformation responds to the history of how print became indoctrinated in the fine arts\, in contrast to its use in community activation and protest. To compete with high art forms\, it became best practice to destroy printing plates to make prints artificially rare. I have always been uncomfortable with destroying evidence of labour in favour of rarifying the asset. I reflect on the tension of assimilation and resistance within printmaking\, as a person of Taiwanese and Chinese descent who has been made artificially rare via ongoing exclusionary policies in white dominant spaces. I reclaim printmaking as a tool of abundance and presence. \nVia this work\, I interweave the personal and political\, to strengthen local-global perspectives of colonization’s impact. I share my family’s stories as a frame through which we can better understand one another as different peoples connected through shared struggles—and shared imaginings for something beyond what our stories seem to be.” \nArtist Bio:  \nJenie Gao (they/she) has run an anti-gentrification arts business since 2014\, specializing in printmaking\, public art\, social practice\, and community storytelling. They consult for cultural organizations and the public sector on equity and ethics. \nJenie pulls from experiences as a second generation Taiwanese-Chinese American and a descendant of working class immigrants. Prior to founding their business\, Jenie worked in the museum industry\, public education\, and lean manufacturing. Through their cross section of experiences\, Jenie has become attuned to issues of artists’ labour\, cultural power\, and institutional accountability. They run a paid apprenticeship program and have thus far mentored 25 emerging artists. \nJenie has a BFA in Printmaking/Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Their work is in 40 institutional collections including Bainbridge Island Museum of Art\, Bowdoin College\, Cornell University\, Stanford University\, and the Library of Congress. Their recent exhibits include Museum of Wisconsin Art\, Trout Museum of Art\, Burnaby Village Museum\, Cedarburg Museum\, and South Bend Museum of Art. Their work has been included in publications such as PBS\, Shoutout LA\, and Fête Chinoise. Their art residencies include Women’s Studio Workshop in Kingston\, New York; Art in the Park with Vancouver Board of Parks & Recreation: Decolonization\, Art\, & Culture; Ma’s House in the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton\, New York; Iowa Lakeside Laboratory in Okoboji\, Iowa; the Bubbler at Madison Public Library in Madison\, Wisconsin; Artist Campaign School in Chicago\, Illinois; Proyecto’ace in Buenos Aires\, Argentina; and Museo de Arte Moderno in Chile. They are a TEDx Madison speaker and gave a talk entitled The Power and Purpose of Creativity. \nJenie Gao is the recently appointed Executive Director of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. They live on the unceded lands of the Musqueam\, Squamish\, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. \n\n_________________________________\nVisitor Information:\nNew to the A/P space? Welcome! Here’s a helpful guide to visiting the A/P Gallery\, Studio\, and Events \nHours and Location: A/P Main Gallery Hours: Wednesday from 10am – 5pm; Thursday – Saturday from 10am – 5pm (closed Sunday\, Monday\, and Tuesday) Accessibility: \nAccessibility:  \nA/P is located near the 39th Ave. C-Train Station and has free parking stalls located in front with additional street parking nearby.  \nThere is an access ramp at the east end of the building\, and A/P is equipped with a wheelchair accessible\, gender neutral washroom.  \n\nWe do our best to accommodate the needs of our visitors whenever possible. We welcome your questions and are committed to working with our members and guests to have a great visit when you are here!  \nInclusivity and code of conduct: \nA/P’s cultivates an inclusive and collaborative environment to learn about printmaking\, to create printed works\, and to pursue exciting artistic opportunities. \nA/P operates by a code of conduct with an expectation of promoting dignity and respect to all\, and we prioritize individual and community safety.  Any form discriminatory behaviour\, intimidation\, bullying\, harassment or victimization is not tolerated. 
URL:https://albertaprintmakers.com/event/the-integrity-of-a-story-by-jenie-gao/
LOCATION:A/P Gallery and Studio\, 460 42 Avenue SE\, Calgary\, Alberta\, T2G 1Y5\, Canada
CATEGORIES:Exhibition Past,Past
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://albertaprintmakers.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Jenie-Gao-TheDeerGarden-highres-02-2.jpg
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