STORIES THAT ANIMATE US
Robert Davidson
Francisco de Goya
Jérôme Havre
David Hockney
Ed Pien
Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo
Marina Roy
Royal Art Lodge
Cauleen Smith
Amanda Strong
Camille Turner
Joyce Wieland
Central Gallery
October 5 to December 28, 2024
Storytelling—its scope and significance—lies at the heart of Stories that animate us. Highlighting a rich selection of works on paper and animations, Stories that animate us draws from a wide range of collectively shared oral histories, knowledge systems, and cosmologies, as well as personal memories, imaginings, and dreams. Whether evoking the spirit world, creating fictional tales or endeavouring to make sense of historical and current events, the featured artists vividly reflect on such themes as culture, community, memory, death, and identity in order to speak to the past, present, and future.
Foregrounding diverse voices, the stories showcased here span from the small to the sweeping. Joyce Wieland and the Royal Art Lodge embrace the exploratory medium of drawing to stimulate the creative process. David Hockney gleans from the world of fairy tales and fiction as fodder for his drawings. Robert Davidson and Amanda Strong bring Indigenous stories to life as potent acts of cultural reclamation and resilience within the colonialist context of Canada. Francisco de Goya and Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo work through the ongoing traumas of war. Marina Roy, Jérôme Havre, Cauleen Smith, and Camille Turner use the speculative nature of the science fiction genre to imagine new identities and ways of being. Ed Pien finds inspiration in the spectral and the supernatural as radical sites of transformative potential.
The narratives evoked here resonate well beyond the artists and artworks featured in this exhibition. Stories that animate us invites the public to reflect on the importance of storytelling in their lives: What stories inspire you, what stories need to be told, and which will you pass on?
Works by Ed Archie NoiseCat and Ed Pien drawn from the Kamloops Art Gallery collection are included as part of the Kamloops iteration of this exhibition.
Stories that animate us is organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery under the Across the Province program and is curated by Diana Freundl, Senior Curator, and Zoë Chan, former Assistant Curator
