By: Clara Xu, Peak Associate
On April 15 at the SFU Audain Gallery, graduating visual arts students from the School for the Contemporary Arts opened their exhibition Kerplunk!, displaying the works of these students from CA 461, one of the last courses they take in their university career. The exhibition was a mish-mash of ideas and presentation styles, from massive chairs to a semi-voyeuristic video. The featured artists interrogated very different ideas, some around similar themes, such as social issues like labour, consumerism, and immigration; or reflections on cultural backgrounds and childhood.
The Peak interviewed one of these artists, Jenny Yu, to discuss her experiences creating for Kerplunk!.
The following interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
How did your cohort settle on this year’s exhibition theme?
For the fourth year show, everyone is doing their own personal practice, and it’s hard to figure out an exhibition name or theme when everyone’s work is so diverse. Someone said, “Kerplunk!” as one of the examples of something fun. I guess it kind of encapsulates all of our works, because if you drop it, it makes a sound.
As a cohort of students working in parallel over the course of four years, in what ways do your works inspire each other, and how does this feed into your own artistic practice?
We all come from very diverse artistic backgrounds, and we think very differently, and we all value different things. And I feel like seeing things from others’ perspectives, or seeing how other classmates try different avenues of artistic practices — like sometimes it could be craft, embroidery, crochet, or even something that’s very regular, like splattering paint or making the paint drippy — inspires everyone to do different things.
I read through the gallery program for your work Canadian Dream. What was the research and collaboration process like for the people you depicted in Canadian Dream?
I’ve always been interested in immigration because my parents immigrated here from China in the ‘80s or ‘90s. I really appreciate how Canada gives people an opportunity here for a better life. But, in the past few years, there’s been a lot of anti-immigration sentiment, and learning from what’s happening in America, once it gets bad, it can get worse.
In order to make my project happen, I had to go all around the city to just talk to the community, and get to know people through questions like, “Why’d you come to Canada? Where are you from?” Sometimes, those are the most interesting stories. Half of my project is on these interviews and their stories, and the other half is on the drawings.
Why did you choose to specifically depict hands in Canadian Dream? What did your creative process look like for yourself?
Right away, I was thinking of labour. So when I think about labour, I always think about hands. And I think it’s mainly because I grew up with people doing hard labour around me, like my grandparents, who’ve been farmers for most of their life.
“What I’m interested in when it comes to beauty is when something isn’t perfect. There’s a characteristic, an innate, unique quality to somebody.”
— Jenny Yu, Student Artist
The reason why I decided on graphite, was what I noticed during the critiques during class. It would seem like people are very focused on the ethnicity of people’s hands if they’re in colour. And my idea of immigration — I didn’t want to focus on ethnicity, I wanted to focus just on the stories, and the idea of immigration on a whole.
What’s next for you and your artistic practice?
With my art practice, I like talking about social issues, mainly issues here locally, because this is where I’m from, and I like building community and I like to get to know people, and I think the only way I want to do that is with art. For now, I’m going to go for my masters’ degree.
