About this Event
Debris of a Mother Tongue: #2 Bombs
Fort Gallery, Langley
In its second iteration at Fort Gallery, Debris of a Mother Tongue: #2 Bombs brings together handmade pigmented paper, works on paper, and oil pastel sculptures to explore the ecology of language, displacement, and the relationship between body and land. The exhibition is part of a longer research and creation project in which Reyhan Yazdani engages with a collection of words and figures drawn from museum archives to consider diaspora, displacement, and the ways histories are collected, carried, and fragmented.
The exhibition’s title, Debris of a Mother Tongue, borrows from fellow Iranian artist Gelare Khoshgozaran’s Royal Debris (2022), drawing from their attention to ruin as a condition of displacement to consider what remains of language when home, body, and mother tongue no longer occupy the same place.
Building on the first exhibition, this chapter introduces new works on paper responding to the current global political landscape, marked by conflict, destruction, and displacement, and the difficulty of finding words for the fear, grief, and uncertainty experienced from a distance. Against a pale sky-blue background, dark sculptural forms inhabit a fragmented landscape, suggesting the tension between vulnerability, destruction, and what remains.
----
Reyhan Yazdani (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer currently based in Vancouver, the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people. Her research-driven work migrates between a range of media including handmade paper, objects, social invitations, and creative writing to engage with ontological, material and spatial inquiries on themes of exile, linguistic displacement, and diasporic approaches to care and belonging.
Yazdani holds an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a Master of Architecture from the University of Tehran. Her practice has been supported through grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council, alongside exhibitions and artist residencies across Canada. Her work has been presented at Kelowna Art Gallery, Seymour Art Gallery, Two Rivers Gallery, Open Studio, and Centre A, with recent and upcoming residencies including Nomadisms at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2026) and Fondazione Officine Saffi in Milan (2027). Yazdani is an Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
----
Supported by a grant from the Township of Langley.
We also acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia
Event venue & nearby stays
salishan Place by the River, 23430 Mavis Avenue, Langley Township, Canada
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.