We regretfully share that the City of Markham has announced it will not be proceeding with the Markham Pan Am Centre installation of the first edition of the Façade Public Art program at this time and has cancelled the September 10 launch event.
We support this artwork and the ideas and dedication behind Julian Yi-Zhong Hou’s "Bicycle" and will continue to work with the City of Markham’s Public Art Program and the artist to identify an opportunity to showcase this important artwork.
We want to acknowledge the support of artists James Albers, Haus of Devereaux, FASTWURMS and Yam Lau.
Launch Event: September 10, 2023, 1–4pm
Featuring:
Drag performances by Haus of Devereaux with special guest appearance by Lady Boi Bangkok
Tarot Card readings by FASTWÜRMS and I Ching readings by Yam Lau
Emcee Grant Peckford
Food Trucks
The event is Free and All are welcome!
Bus transportation available from downtown Toronto (Spadina and Bloor) to the launch (subject to capacity).
Please contact Maria Won to register at mwon11@yorku.ca
Please join the City of Markham’s Public Art Program and the Art Gallery of York University for the launch of the inaugural public art commission Bicycle by artist Julian Yi-Zhong Hou curated by Yan Wu, Public Art Curator, City of Markham to be presented on the west façade of the Markham Pan Am Centre.
Staged as a floating signifier, literally and semiotically, Façade invites four artists to explore the performative potential of an architectural element as public space, and to contemplate the layered identity of a place through the lens of their artistic and theoretical concerns.
The City of Markham’s Public Art Program and the Art Gallery of York University collaborate to commission a series of temporary public artworks on the west façade of the Markham Pan Am Centre. Under the title and theme of Façade, four curators will each invite an artist to develop a massive 127 x 32 foot photomural conceived and designed specifically for the site. Each project will be unveiled consecutively over the course of three years, beginning with work by Julian Yi-Zhong Hou curated by Markham’s Public Art Curator Yan Wu to be launched in September 2023. New Commissions by Andrea Carlson curated by AGYU’s Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Clara Halpern and Aleksandra Domanović curated by AGYU’s Director/Curator Jenifer Papararo will follow with a final project curated by Artangel’s Director Mariam Zulfiqar.
We use the theme Façade to articulate a possibility of encounters. Technically, the façade is a building’s outer-shell and can refer to all of its external surfaces, but most typical to its front and public face, which is commonly accentuated with material flourishes. The façade of a building houses its main entry point, and as such is usually dressed up, stylized, and adorned. It’s embellishment acts as a means of way finding, designed to draw a person’s attention, and as a first encounter, establishing an impression of what lay beyond it. The façade can set a mood, create an experience, and indicate what’s to come. It can also mislead, be a mask covering something more perfunctory, plain or even ugly. A façade in general can be used as a distraction, and as a means of redirection, shifting one’s focus away from the lesser materials used internally, or the mundaneness of everyday operations. It can be used to create an illusion of grandeur, signifying status and thus directing behaviour. But ultimately, it is a threshold and point of entry to what’s beyond its surface. For this public art series, we invoke this liminal space between exterior and interior, applying another surface to a surface, to metaphorically create an opening for the public to engage with artwork that esoterically, symbolically and visually shifts our perceptions and assumptions about who and what gets represented. The artists selected to varying degrees render internal dialogues externally, exposing what lies beneath the surface of how we represent and construct society and community while also questioning who and what is allowed and deemed worthy of taking up space.
Chosen as the architectural host of Façade, the Markham Pan Am Centre is a multi-purpose, high performance sport facility designed to serve as one of the venues for the 2015 Pan American Games. Its location is interwoven with the past, present, and future of Markham. Indigenous peoples have lived for over 10,000 years in the Markham area, and the Centre is positioned adjacent to the Rouge River, an important watershed that hosts some of Canada’s oldest known Indigenous sites. The Centre sits on the south end of Main Street Unionville, one of the city’s most celebrated historic neighbourhoods, and at the eastern edge of Markham Centre, a planned development by the city for a vibrant, intensive, mixed-use downtown. Across the street to its north are a secondary school and a retirement home. To the west of the Centre, on the adjacent lot, York University is constructing a new campus scheduled to open in 2024, which will focus on technology and entrepreneurship, hosting programs from science to engineering as well as the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, among others.
Each of the artworks presented in Façade will bring a distinct perspective to this series in both artistic approach and content. The first project to be presented is a photo-collage by Julian Yi-Zhong Hou. Curator Yan Wu engaged Hou to create a new artwork that reflects his speculative approach to translating traditional Chinese aesthetics across time and space, and its application in representing contemporary popular culture and lived experiences. Following Hou’s work, Andrea Carlson’s project will launch in Spring of 2024. Given the potential for Façade as a future-oriented platform, Clara Halpern has invited Andrea Carlson for the artist’s visionary practice, which often engages with Indigenous Futurism(s), language, and land. In Fall of 2024, Aleksandra Domanović’s project curated by AGYU’s Director/Curator Jenifer Papararo will launch as York University’s Markham Campus opens. Papararo approached Domanović for the artist’s feminist and perceptual exploration of moments of technological advancement from ultra-sound to the internet. Mariam Zulfiqar will curate the last iteration of Façade. Zulfiqar’s curatorial work focuses on public art, recognising the potential of site-specificity for broadening dialogue and understanding. Her work manifests in unusual places including transport infrastructures such as canal and railway networks, disused and abandoned buildings, and sites of historic significance.
Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe) is an artist and writer based in Grand Marais, MN. Carlson’s practice includes painting, drawing and installation. Her research includes Indigenous Futurism(s) and the entanglement of cultural narratives and institutions. Her solo exhibition Future Cache is on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and other recent exhibitions include the Front Triennial (Cleveland) and the Toronto Biennial. Her work is in collections including the British Museum, the Walker Art Museum, The Whitney Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2022 United States Artists Fellow and is co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.
Aleksandra Domanović works critically reflects of the internet through a feminist lens, exploring the relations of technology, history and identity in sculpture, video and digital artwork. The artist employs an autobiographical approach, often reflecting on the complex history of her native Yugoslavia. Domanović has had major solo exhibitions at The MAK Center: Mackey Garage Top Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2019), MoCA Cleveland (2018) and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2017). Her work has also been included in several international biennials including the VAC Foundation exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennial (2019), the Belgrade Biennial (2018), Manifesta 11 in Zurich (2016), the New Museum Triennial (2015) and Shanghai Biennale (2014).
Julian Yi-Zhong Hou is a multidisciplinary artist that currently resides in British Columbia, Canada. His work centres around contemporary mystical themes including consciousness, divination, and symbology. Recent works have been shown on e-flux; San Antonio Artpace; Music Gallery, Toronto; Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Artspeak, Vancouver; SFU Audain gallery, Vancouver; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. He recently completed Crossroads (2021), a large-scale stained glass public artwork in Burnaby, B.C
Clara Halpern is currently Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, AGYU. In her curatorial work she is interested in contemporary art, temporality, and the internet. She has curated projects for Oakville Galleries; The Power Plant, Toronto; Nuit Blanche (City of Toronto); Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; and Abrons Arts Center, New York. Her work spans writing, researching (The Centre for Possible Studies, Serpentine Gallery, London), producing (US Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2013), and education programming (Frieze, New York). She holds an MA from CCS, Bard College.
Jenifer Papararo is currently Director/Curator of the Art Gallery of York University, where she is overseeing the building of a new multi-site art gallery, and its transformation into the Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery of York University. She was Executive Director of Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2014 – 2019); Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2004 – 2014); and the Program Director at Mercer Union, Toronto (2001 – 2004). She has frequently directed her curatorial efforts towards examining collaborative practices and collectivity, as a means of reflecting on and criticizing capitalist systems, while also envisioning alternative economies.
Yan Wu is currently Public Art Curator for the City of Markham, where she recently oversaw the city’s first five-year public art master plan and is now managing its implementation. Wu was the curator-in-residence at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2016–17), and where she recently guest-curated a series of screen-based new commissions titled Immaterial Architecture (2021) and Chinese artist Miao Ying’s first solo exhibition in Canada (2022). In 2015, she was assistant curator for the inaugural Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, and in 2013, co-curated the Canada Pavilion at the fifth Bi-City Urbanism/Architecture Biennale in Shenzhen China. Wu’s curatorial work operates at the intersection of contemporary art, architecture, and the making of public space.
Mariam Zulfiqar is the Director of Artangel in the UK, joining the team in early 2022. In 2021, she led the National Art Programme at Forestry England with a focus on the intersection between art and the climate and biodiversity crises. In 2020, she worked as an independent curator for Chiswick House and Gardens and Deputy Director and Chief Curator for UP Projects. Her recent curatorial programmes include Bring into Being, Chiswick House, United Kingdom, 2021; The Floating Cinema, UP Projects, United Kingdom, 2017; and Changing Places, Film and Video Umbrella, United Kingdom, 2017/2018.
We acknowledge Façade’s placement on the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples and want to thank the Haudenosaunee, Huron- Wendat, Anishnabeg, Seneca, Chippewa, and the Mississaugas of the Credit peoples for being care-takers of this land, now and for thousands of years.
City of Markham Land Acknowledgement
The City of Markham is situated on the traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe. We are committed to reconciliation, partnership, and enhanced understanding.
We are all Treaty people. Many of us have come here as settlers, immigrants, and newcomers in this generation or generations past. We’d like to also acknowledge and honour those who came here involuntarily, particularly those who are descended from those brought here through enslavement.
