About this Event
Vancouver Civic Theatres is proud to present a Visual Arts Open House in the lobbies of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The current visual arts exhibition features work by sharai mustatia and Biliana Velkova.
Register now: Tickets available at Universe
About the Exhibition
sharai mustatia – KEEP GOING
From the artist:
I am a Métis / Romanian person coming to terms with intergenerational trauma.
With intentional experimentation and analogue cameras and techniques, my work is an exploration of survival as a Métis mother who was coerced into giving their two children up for adoption.
The focus of my photography is about learning to create belonging and connection. As I learn more about where I come from ancestrally, new understanding informs how I move forward. The art I make helps me discover ways to thrive, create self-forgiveness, and learn to express art that heals the heart. This work is my message to anyone who resonates with it that, you are not alone.
Through collage, analogue photography and in-camera editing, I create images filled with layers of meaning, emotion and one person’s journey of transformational healing. Identity, place and belonging are major themes of my work, where healthy self-discovery and expression are the result.
Biliana Velkova – The Language of Beasts
Fragmented bodies, protean spaces and mercurial atmospheres, The Language of Beasts is a quicksilver suite of paintings that elicits lucid dream states and conjures infinite transformation.
The beasts featured in Biliana Velkova’s paintings are fantastical renderings of familiar animals that often have chimeric elements to them. Dogfish-entrail hybrids, alligators morphing into worms, wolves who breathe fire. None of these characters are concerned with us voyeuristic humans who have been drawn into their mystical world. No character looks back at us, as was the Velkova’s intention – to create a world of possibility and potential, one without humans and anthropocenic dominance. She invites us to ponder what would life look like without us?
The Language of Beasts presents visitors with an opportunity to sense and to dream, to immerse into a world in flux. We encounter a fluidity of states, of beings and of relationships, which opens up the potential for us to reflect on our own personal place and humanity’s place on earth. As observers, we are invited to decipher if the artist is presenting these beasts as harbingers of our demise, or as a subversive reminder that we are all bound to each other, and the planet.
The exhibition will also feature work by Alessandra Mei, Wendy Joy, Noa Capelle, and Braden McGraw; students from Vancouver Community College’s Jewellery Arts and Design Program.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, Canada