Chan, Zoë | Critical Distance Centre for Curators

Zoë Chan

Zoë Chan is a curator who lives in Vancouver on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Sel̓íl̓witulh Nations. As an independent curator (2012-2019), she has delved into a range of subjects including documentary practices, youth, food, and discourse around representation in art and visual culture and her curatorial projects have been presented by Trinity Square Video, Vidéographe, Kamloops Art Gallery, Optica, MSVU Art Gallery, Foreman Art Gallery, Articule, and the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels).

Chan was appointed to the Curator role at the Richmond Art Gallery in 2022, and before that she was the Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she curated Uncommon Language (2020-21), and co-curated Where do we go from here? (2020-21) and Stories that animate us (2021). In 2017, Chan was the inaugural curator at the Foundry Darling’s Paris-based residency at Les Récollets organised in collaboration with the Canadian Cultural Centre and La Ville de Paris. Chan is a two-time recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Project Grant to Curators and Critics, receiving the Joan Lowndes Award in recognition of excellence in critical and curatorial writing in 2015, and she was selected by ICI (Independent Curators International) to participate in the 2014 Curatorial Intensive program in NYC. Her writing has been published in C Magazine, esse arts + opinions, and Momus, among others. Chan graduated with a Master’s degree in Art History from Concordia University.

Links

Zoë Chan’s website

PROGRAM: Peer-to-Peer: The First Circle

October 18, 2024 - December 31, 2024

Critical Distance is thrilled to launch our latest initiative to support curatorial practices across Canada and beyond. Titled Peer-to-Peer, this Directory-based program shines a spotlight on emerging, midcareer, and established curators whose projects and practices have attracted the notice of colleagues in the field.

Please join us in congratulating the First Circle curators, namely:

Amin Alsaden
Fatma Hendawy Yehia
Genevieve Wallen
Kate Whiteway
Lillian O’Brien Davis
Liz Ikiriko
Noor Alé
Sean Lee
Swapnaa Tamhane
Zoë Chan

Find out more

Gallery

A video projected on to a wall shows three hand-made puppets sitting facing each other in a semi-circle; each puppet respectively represents one of the three Black artists who made the video.

On a dusty coral-coloured wall, there is a wall text with the exhibition title “Uncommon Language” in a white sans serif font followed by smaller text. Three pieces of wood that resemble masks are placed in a line to the right of the exhibition text.

A brightly lit gallery with white walls. In the centre foreground, there is a circular sculpture made of sheets of crumpled rice paper hung from the ceiling. It appears to float in the space. On the walls are several framed works including two rows of prints on the right.

A series of five wooden panels painted black, hung on a white wall. Affixed to each panel is a circular brass armature, each of which is decorated differently, for instance with chains, corn kernels, hair, and/or leather.

A darkly lit gallery with two concrete columns. On the left, there is a video projection showing the filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, surrounded by two people. Her hair is in a braid and she is wearing earrings and a blue top. In front of the projection is a bench with three headphones. On the column next to the projection is poster with the title of the video “Creatura Dada” in bright red capital letters against a yellow background. On the right a black hutch holds a video monitor. In the very back, there is big banner with two video screens under it.

A white wall intermittently covered with large square fluorescent Post-it notes, creating a pink and white checkerboard pattern. A video monitor is hung on the left side of the wall, with headphones. The monitor shows a smiling Black pre-teen in a T-shirt that says “Super Genius,” and standing in front of a pink-and-white patterned wall like the one in the gallery.

A dark gallery with two video projections on separate walls. The left projection shows an Indigenous child, and on the right, a jerry-rigged shopping cart piled with random objects. There are two benches, one of which is occupied by a visitor.

A gallery with two video projections on separate walls: one placed close to the ground while the other is higher up. There are two people in the room sitting on two of the five overturned Home Depot buckets placed around the room. The screen on the left shows five Guatemalan men all dressed in black tshirts standing or kneeling on a wooden dolly and miming shooting in various directions. They are in a Home Depot parking lot on a sunny day. In the screen on the right, a Guatemalan man in jeans and a white T-shirt brandishes his hands as if they held pointed guns.

On the left, Chinese characters are roughly painted in black onto six paper scrolls of different lengths hung in a row across two walls; one scroll is long enough to pool onto the floor. A gallery visitor sits on one of two stools in front of a video monitor hung on showing two people of Asian descent looking downwards with serious expressions.

Video still of a young person of colour wearing a bright blue shirt with a floral motif, while yelling in front of a blurred backdrop of vibrant greenery.