Artist: Chantal Gibson
Exhibition title: un/titled. Portraits
Venue: Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP, Vancouver, Canada
Date: September 24 – November 26, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP, Vancouver
In un/titled, Chantal Gibson continues her work with black souvenir spoons, creating a series of portraits that speak to themes of gendered and generational (dis)connection, (dis)placement and re(dis)covery.
Playing with size, scale and perspective, Gibson transforms a small, vintage spoon into large photographs, revealing a sailing vessel big enough to wonder who’s inside? Each blackened ornament is a holder of memory, each body a portrait of a time, a place, a transaction.
CHANTAL GIBSON is an award-winning writer-artist-educator living on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. Working in the overlap between literary and visual art, her work confronts colonialism head on, imagining the BIPOC voices silenced in the spaces and omissions left by cultural and institutional erasure. Her visual art has been exhibited at the ROM, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Open Space Victoria, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Anthropology, and the Senate of Canada. She is currently exhibiting in the exhibition, Nostalgia Interrupted, at the Doris McCarthy Gallery in Toronto.
Her debut book of poetry, How She Read (Caitlin Press, 2019) explores the representation of Black women in Canadian history, art, literature. It won the 2020 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the 2020 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her follow up collection with/holding (Caitlin Press, 2021) examines the representation of Blackness across digital media. A 2021 3M National Teaching Fellow, Gibson teaches writing and design communication in the School of Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University.
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, un/titled. Portraits, 2022, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
Chantal Gibson, Nana, 2022, Souvenir spoons, acrylic paint, restored display box circa. 1970s, 12 x 15 in (30.5 x 38.1 cm)
Chantal Gibson, un/titled 1. Portrait, 2022, Archival inkjet print, 48 x 35 in (121.9 x 88.9 cm), Framed
Chantal Gibson, un/titled 2. Portrait, 2022, Archival inkjet print, 48 x 35 in (121.9 x 88.9 cm), Framed
Chantal Gibson, un/titled 3. Portrait, 2022, Archival inkjet print, 48 x 35 in (121.9 x 88.9 cm), Framed
Chantal Gibson, un/titled 4. Portrait, 2022, Archival inkjet print, 48 x 35 in (121.9 x 88.9 cm), Framed
Chantal Gibson, untitled redacted text 3, 2022, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 8 x 6 x 5 in (20.3 x 15.2 x 12.7 cm)
Chantal Gibson, untitled redacted text 3, 2022, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 8 x 6 x 5 in (20.3 x 15.2 x 12.7 cm)
Chantal Gibson, untitled redacted text 4, 2022, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 4.5 x 4.5 x 7 in (11.4 x 11.4 x 17.8 cm)
Chantal Gibson, untitled redacted text 4, 2022, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 4.5 x 4.5 x 7 in (11.4 x 11.4 x 17.8 cm)
Chantal Gibson, untitled redacted text 1 + 2, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 4” x 3” x 8”; 5” x 3” x 8”
Chantal Gibson, untitled redacted text 1 + 2, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 4” x 3” x 8”; 5” x 3” x 8”
Chantal Gibson, un/titled self. Portrait, 2020, Digital photograph on aluminum, 28 x 42 in (71.1 x 106.7 cm)
Chantal Gibson, In lieu of flowers (for Breonna), 2020, Digital photograph on aluminum, 28 x 42 in (71.1 x 106.7 cm)
Chantal Gibson, Black Futures I, 2022, Wood frame, canvas, liquid rubber 23.5 x 19.5 in (59.7 x 49.5 cm)
Chantal Gibson, Black Futures II, 2022, Wood frame, canvas, liquid rubber 23.5 x 19.5 in (59.7 x 49.5 cm)
Chantal Gibson, Queer Theory, 2022, Souvenir spoons, acrylic rack, acrylic paint, shadow box, 8.5 x 36.5 in (21.6 x 92.7 cm)
Chantal Gibson, braided study 4, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Cotton thread, liquid rubber
Chantal Gibson, Ideology, 2022, Souvenir spoons, acrylic rack, acrylic paint, shadow box, 8.5 x 7 in (21.6 x 17.8 cm)
Chantal Gibson, braided study 1, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Cotton thread, liquid rubber
Chantal Gibson, braided study 2, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Cotton thread, liquid rubber
Chantal Gibson, braided study 3, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Cotton thread, liquid rubber
Chantal Gibson, The Story of Philosophy, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 8 x 6 x 2 in (20.3 x 15.2 x 5.1 cm)
Chantal Gibson, The Story of Philosophy, 2019, Studies in Erasure 2019— 2022, Altered book, liquid rubber, 8 x 6 x 2 in (20.3 x 15.2 x 5.1 cm)