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September 4 - October 11, 2025please join us for the opening on Thursday September 4th from 6 to 8 pm
This body of work is coterminous to Yan’s exhibition Jillian, presented earlier this year. This was the initial exploration of the self as unfixed, defined beyond the autobiographical to include auto fiction, and portrayed notions of divergent positions of being co-existing simultaneously.
Within this new body of work, Yan is forthcoming about her idealization of her immigration to North America. She has approached the process of making as essentially genre-less – as in; there is no fixed stylistic boundary – a choice disparate to the bulk of her previous work, which is aesthetically controlled, relying on graphic linearity, and bold contrast. This is in part influenced by the tone of referenced subject matter and imagery. The paintings hold movement, and shift, layer upon layer pulsing in and out of a memorialization of Yan’s former self, her other. Therein lies a measure of visual sincerity and vulnerability of her immigrant experience – an experience wrought with a cognisance of defiance, desperation, and hopelessness.
Witnessing this new work in response to Jillian foregrounds this alternate version of the self with repose - presenting her embodied; hip pushed to one side, with long-black hair she perches on the edge of reality as her legacy softly disappears into backgrounds of cash, black stars, and storms of cars in tandem drift.
Gillian to Jillian: “(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
137 Tecumseth Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, Ontario M6J 2H2
