The Hatch Art Gallery’s first exhibition of the year, Reveal/Reform, opened on September 26 and showcases students' artwork centred around social justice movements.
According to the gallery walls, the exhibit serves to break the “arbitrary barriers of apathy and distance created by language, cultural context, geography, systems, and institutions.”
Reveal/Reform is in collaboration with ARTIVISM, an annual visual and performing arts festival at UBC.
“One thing that was really important for me was a gap that I saw in the student body. [There] was a deep fragmentation between different initiatives and movements, and this is a microcosm. People and movements and disciplines are very isolated,” said Isabel Chen, the Hatch director and third-year psychology student. “This is not how I envision the world to be … Humans are meant to be together.”
Chen said curating the exhibit was a collective effort between student groups like Sulong UBC, UBC Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, Black Void UBC and the Ukrainian Students Union. She also said Reveal/Reform featured 31 independent student artist submissions, collaged together to show the overlapping of experiences.
The Reveal/Reform opening featured “Fresh Off The Banana Boat,” a performance art piece by Deon Feng, a dialogue circle facilitated by Asha Collective and an open mic.
“I think everyone left afterwards feeling healed. We've gone through a process of healing together,” said Chen.
“Fresh Off The Banana Boat” followed Feng with the Chinese word for crazy — painted over their left eye. Feng broke bananas over their legs and threw boiled eggs against the glass wall of the Hatch to crack them. Feng then ate a paste made out of mortar and pestle muddled eggs and lemons which was smeared inside a banana peel.
According to Feng, a UBC and Sciences Po dual degree student, the piece’s title comes from the terms “fresh off the boat” and “banana.” “Fresh off the boat,” refers to immigrants who have yet to assimilate to the host nation’s culture, while “banana,” is a pejorative term which refers to people being perceived as Asian by appearance only and white otherwise since they engage in or relate to North American culture, media and language.
“I remember [it] applied to me personally, because I was fluent in English, fortunately, or unfortunately,” said Feng. “It's a very psychologically harmful experience.”
During the performance, Feng wrote “You can find everything you want here,” in English and “You won’t find everything you want here,” in Chinese on a long piece of white paper, a testament to break down the North American dream of immigration bringing a new and better life.
Feng said the Chinese writing on the poster and over their eye serve as an “easter egg” for people who understand the language, but people who aren’t Chinese are still able to engage with the piece's themes of immigration and discrimination.
Feng said the piece’s meaning is up to interpretation based on the viewer’s perspectives and experiences — something they saw during the opening while hearing feedback from people who aren’t Chinese.
“Don’t take my word for it,” said Feng. “I might not know what it means myself as an artist.”
Looking forward to the upcoming season, the Hatch will be holding a climate catharsis exhibition in January, and in March, an exhibit on fairness, Blackness, Trans identity and the evolution of self alongside the Sexual Assault Support Centre, according to Chen.
“The bridging of perspectives — that's at the heart of all of our exhibitions,” said Chen. “Art is that thing that allows us to see beyond the boundaries of our own experiences, to see that we're not so different from each other.”
Reveal/Reform will be showing at the Hatch until October 19.