In the 1931 Paramount Picture’s release of Daughter of the Dragon, the protagonist Ling Moy (played by Anna May Wong) pledges her time to revenge her family by assassinating her aristocratic adversary. Despite her determination with the task at hand, her father doubts the capabilities of his daughter, a character who earns her wages as dancer. In anguish he cries ‘the knife will wither your petal fingers’

Referencing this instance in western cinematic history, the exhibition is a conflation of themes surrounding the intersections of cinema and conflict, time and labour, memory and representation. Throughout the hypnagogic landscape of the exhibition, the associative and symbolic imagery aims to complicate these themes— it proposes a subtext that allegorizes the movement within moving images to diasporic experience:

The image of the hand— on a clock, on a metronome, the hands of the artist’s family members, the hand of an open-source robot, persists as a motif of measured work and care. They vary between articulate and purposeful, clumsy and inefficient, occupied and then encumbered, keeping time then skipping through it. These hands are then connected to working bodies as family members weave in and out of the frame, preferring not to reveal their faces when going about their day. Explosions and coloured smoke in their suburban garden interrupt the household’s ongoing activities. An unfurled VHS tape and a rapid succession of family photographs refuse the nostalgia inherent in their format. Sampled video and audio clips from Vietnam war movies, a viral video impersonation of a nail salon technician and user uploaded Youtube video essays collage and ‘conflict’ amongst one another and throughout the scenes of the household. Outside the frame of the video and in the exhibition space, the robotic hand is seen static, accompanied by a leather glove decked with wires and a copper chip— perhaps the artifice responsible for it’s on screen articulation. In the exhibition, the hand is a puppet in repose.

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About Gabi Dao

Gabi Dao is an artist, organizer and editor/producer of the irregularly published Here Nor There podcast series. Her work begins by examining the tectonics of cultural and subjective memories and manifests as multi-media installations, object making, sound and occasional writing. She seeks to create sensorial narratives alternative to the dominant systems of linear representation. As an extension of her practice, she co-organizes and co-produces events, exhibitions, musical performances with collaborators at Duplex, a pair of studio spaces and project space on unceded Coast Salish Territories including Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Vancouver. She has been involved in various exhibitions and projects at 221a, Spare Room, Dynamo Arts Association, The New Music Centre (CA, AB), Artspeak, Western Front, The Nanaimo Art Gallery and Unit 17. She was the recipient of the Portfolio Prize (BFA category) in 2016 and was nominated for The Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver 2017 Artist Prize long list.

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Sponsors

Special thanks to our community sponsor, Video Pool Media Arts Centre

Press

Download the official press release

Review: Gabi Dao at Blinkers by Luther Konadu for Akimbo

More Info

Link to the opening event on facebook.