Julian Yi-Zhong Hou at Zalucky Contemporary

Artist: Julian Yi-Zhong Hou

Exhibition title: Country Balance

Venue: Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada

Date: July 31 – September 11, 2021

Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Zalucky Contemporary

Country Balance pulls its viewers into the early stages of a new divinatory system. The artist, Julian Yi-Zhong Hou, draws from a matrix of references including Tarot, graphic design, symbolism, philosophy and various cultures – all of which are fil-tered through his positionality as a diasporic Chinese-Canadian settler. Hou is particularly concerned with the ways in which traditional Chinese aesthetics can be translated through time and space, then applied to his own lived experience here on Turtle Island (North America).

Featured in Country Balance are nine stained-glass works that mark the beginning of a larger project. Most pieces find their shape in the formal properties of Chinese coins, pentacles, medallions and other signifiers of value. The first work in the se-quence, I. Coin, resembles the shape of ancient Chinese coin — a small round piece of metal with a square hold punched out of its centre. The graphic composition circling the centre refers specifically to a Chinese-styled plate found at a Value Village in Vernon, BC, where the artist resides. The trapezoidal shapes scattered about the surface also recall Chinese fans, made ever popular by tourists. I. Coin begins the series by asking the viewer to consider the ways in which symbolic and fiscal value is assigned to certain cultural objects through recapitulated and eroded orientalist iconography.

Other works in the series borrow their shape from the spiritual and philosophical tradition of Taoism, and more specifical-ly Feng Shui, the Taoist method for improving the flow of positive chi (energy) through the arrangement of furniture and decoration. Three works in the series (II. Lovers, VIII. Jade and IX. Angel Wings) reference the bagua mirror – an octagonal mirror often hung at the entrance of a home. In this way, these works function as spiritual totems for cleansing and healing negative energy when placed in the correct spatial alignment.

Following in the tradition of conveying religious stories and spiritual fables through stained-glass imagery, the collection of works in Country Balance spring from a similar desire to make sense of the universe. By soldering together signs and symbols captured through personal encounters and an intuitive drawing practice, Hou proposes that art can function as a means for self-divination.

– James Albers

Julian Yi-Zhong Hou (b. 1980) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Edmonton, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory, and currently resides between Vernon, on the unceded land of the Syilx peoples of the Okanagan Nation, and Vancouver, on the unceded land of ̓ the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam) Nations. His work centres around contemporary mystical subjects, consciousness, and pagan and divination ritual, practice, and research. His work has been the focus of solo and group exhibitions at Soon.tw, Montreal; 8-eleven,Toronto; Artspeak, Vancouver; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. His most recent work, Grass Drama, has been shown in parts at Malaspina Printmakers Society, Vancouver (2021), Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2020), Cassandra Cassandra, Toronto (2019); Unit 17, Vancouver (2018); and in Charcuterie 4 (2018). He recently completed Crossroads (2021), a large-scale stained glass public artwork in Burnaby, B.C.. Hou holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Culture Studies from Simon Fraser University and a Masters in Architecture from the University of British Columbia. He has held residencies at Triangle, Marseilles; Western Front and 221A Vancouver, and in 2017 won the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Award for Emerging Visual Artist. He was long-listed for the Sobey Award in 2021. He is one of the founding members of the art record label Second Spring.

Julian Yi-Zhong, I. Coin, 2021, tiffany style stained-glass, 16.5 inches diameter

Julian Yi-Zhong, Lovers, 2021, tiffany style stained-glass, 17.5 inches diameter

Julian Yi-Zhong, III. Serpentine, 2021, tiffany style stained-glass, serpentine, 17 inches diameter