Exhibition run: 09–20 January 2024 at Trinity Square Video (#121, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto)
Opening Reception: 11 January 2024, 18:00 to 20:00 EST
When the Sun is Above the Horizon: Stories from Asian Diaspora is a multimodal exhibition that engages in themes of Asian diasporic representation. Unfolding in three chapters, the exhibit moves through the sonic, virtual, and kinetic registers of Asian diasporic subjectivity. The sun holds conflicting meanings across Asian diasporas. As symbolic of life, spirituality, and resistance against injustice, it is also associated with imperial aggression and violence. As a framing device that threads the exhibition together, the sun resists its romanticized associations and instead plots out the messy, celebratory, mundane, and painful textures of Asian diasporic life.
Curated by Dias:stories, a community research group focused on supporting the creation of digital stories about Asian experiences, this exhibit features work that emerged out of three workshops: Future Through Memory, Sounding Stories, and tender curiosities.
Future through Memory was developed and facilitated by Lilian Leung, a designer and community-based researcher working across artistic disciplines. This workshop series invited participants to visualize personal memories of East and Southeast Asian diasporic experience through transmedia storytelling methods and virtual reality.
Sounding Stories was developed and facilitated by apé aliermo, a community arts organizer and multidisciplinary artist working primarily with sound. This workshop series focused on critical listening methods, field recording, and experimental sound recording techniques as modes of diasporic archiving.
tender curiosities was developed and facilitated by Jasmine Liaw, an interdisciplinary artist, dance performer, and filmmaker experimenting with new media and movement practices. This workshop series invited participants to investigate identity politics within dance-technology mediums and auto-ethnographic research through engagements with movement, text, and somatic-driven explorations.
Dias:stories is led by Immony Mèn and Casey Mecija with support from OCAD University, York University, Trinity Square Video, the York Centre for Asian Research, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
For more information: dias.stories@gmail.com