Panel Talk – Between Worlds: The Independent Path of Diasporic Artists

Join us on Thursday, July 25 2024 at 15:00 at CICA Vancouver for an engaging discussion, and learn about their unique journeys and the challenges they face as diasporic artists navigating between cultures.

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Diyan Achjadi (they/she) is a Vancouver-based artist who explores the ways that surface ornamentation and illustrated printed matter can function as archives documenting the circulation of ideas in visual form. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, their formative years were spent moving between multiple educational, political, and cultural systems. Through drawing, printmaking, and animation, they use modes of fiction and storytelling to examine interrelated and conflicting histories of place.

Diyan received a BFA from the Cooper Union (New York, NY) and an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal, QC). She has exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and beyond. Recent exhibitions include Stories for Futures, Real and Imagined (2024); Godzilla: Echoes from the 1990s Asian American Arts Network (2024); “Between Line and Thread: Connecting the Asian American Arts Centre Collection”(2023); Carried Through The Water (2022); Whose Stories? (2021).

Public art projects include Hush, an animation commissioned by Emily Carr University for the City of Vancouver Public Art Program (2021); NonSerie (In Commute), part of How far do you travel?, a year-long exhibition on the exterior of public buses, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG) in partnership with Translink BC (2019); and Coming Soon!, a monthly series of prints installed at sites slated for construction and development, commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, documented with a book-length publication in 2020. In 2021, Diyan was a recipient of the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation

Diyan is a Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art and currently serving as Interim Vice-President Academic at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Makiko Hara

Independent Curator

Curator in Residence, Vancouver Art Gallery

Makiko Hara has over three decades of experience in international contemporary art, as an independent curator, producer, organizer, lecturer, performance artist, writer, and cultural consultant. Since relocating from Tokyo to Vancouver in 2007, she has continued to challenge notions of cross-Pacific identity through an array of experimental curatorial practices. Hara was awarded the Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize in 2021 as the first Non-institutional, immigrant curator of Asian descent.

From 2007 to 2013, Hara was the Chief Curator / Deputy Director of Centre A —Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, where she presented work together with numerous artists, cultural workers, and local and international communities across the Pacific and beyond. Hara has been invited to many projects as an independent guest curator – including Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche, (Toronto, Canada, 2009), AIR YONAGO, Tottori Geijyu Art Festival (Yonago, Japan, 2014-15), Fictive Communities Asia-Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama, Japan, 2014), Rock Paper Scissors, Cindy Mochizuki, (Yonago City Museum of Art, Tottori, Japan, 2018), Who’s Stories, Kamloops Art Gallery, (2022), and most recently, Hara co-curates “WOVEN- Setsuko Piroche’s Wonderland”, opens in March 2024 at Nikkei National Museum and Culture Centre. Hara was appointed advisory director of the International Exchange Center, Akita University of Arts, Akita, Japan between 2017-2022. As a founding member of the BC-based curatorial platform “Pacific Crossings”, she has initiated and organized numerous conversations, residencies, and online/offline cultural exchanges across the Pacific. In 2020 Hara founded My Kitchen Anthropology Museum in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown.

In Vancouver, as an independent curator, Hara was guest curated for the NEXT series with “Zero Yen House” by Kyohei Sakaguchi, (2006) and “Mash Up-The Birth of Modern”, (2016) at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In 2022-23, Hara curated the Offsite public art project, featuring Lani Maestro, “No Pain Like This Body” (2010-2022), and Pedro Reyes, “PACE IN SPACE!! “(2023), both at Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite.

Hara was appointed Curator in Residence at, Vancouver Art Gallery in March 2024.

James Jean was born in Taiwan in 1979 and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, graduating with a BFA in 2001. He is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose works explore imagination and reality through narrative-driven, layered compositions. His expressionistic, painterly approach to mark-making blends figuration with abstraction in works that are at once technically precise and gestural. He works primarily in painting and drawing, while also embracing other media including sculpture, installation, and video. Jean has focused his multifaceted studio practice on fusing contemporary subjects with aesthetic techniques from such diverse sources as traditional Chinese scroll paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, Renaissance portraiture, West African Masquerade, comic books, and psychedelia. By experimenting with different styles and art-historical genres, Jean depicts detailed cosmological worlds that focus on both individual and universal experiences. Layered with imagery drawn from contemporary culture and age-old allegories, he imagines a collective realm of mythological proportions. Recent collaborations of note include work with Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, Guillermo Del Toro, and Darren Aronofsky.

Jean’s works form part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, United States), Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, United States), Lotte Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea), and Colección SOLO (Madrid Spain).

, running from July 25 to September 15, 2024, offers a captivating exploration of the work of an artist whose journey resonates deeply with many in the diasporic community. This exhibition provides a rich and evocative backdrop for the panel talk, “Between Worlds: The Independent Path of Diasporic Artists,“ which brings together voices that offer diverse perspectives on identity, cultural integration, and the pursuit of artistic independence.

Throughout the panel talk, James Jean will share his personal challenges in connecting with his culture within the diaspora and how these experiences have profoundly influenced his artistic expression. This conversation aims to deepen the understanding of the diasporic experience in the art world and celebrate the resilience and creativity of artists who navigate these unique paths.

By facilitating this dialogue, CICA aims to enrich the community’s appreciation of contemporary art while providing a platform for meaningful discussions that resonate with diverse audiences.

Join us for this panel talk on Thursday, July 25 from 3 to 5 pm at CICA Vancouver.

This event is supported by the David Lam Centre at Simon Fraser University.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

CICA Vancouver, 228 Abbott Street, Vancouver, Canada