Leeay Aikawa, Kristi Chen & Akash Inbakumar
© Photo Credits: Landbeing Exhibition, Guy L’Heureux, 2024.
Landbeing
Exhibition from August 23, 2024 to October 5, 2024.
Opening on August 23, 2024, from 7 to 9 PM.
Artist panel discussion moderated by Aaron McIntosh on August 23 at 5:30 PM. The event is open to all. The discussion will be held in English, with whispered translation available on site.
Landbeing brings together the works of Toronto-based artists Leeay Aikawa, Kristi Chen and Akash Inbakumar as they explore their relationship to land and to the basic elements that make the particular geological conditions of the land. They let their bodies (re)belong with their kin and places where they’ve left bits of themselves behind.
Inspired by season-based expressions of the land, Aikawa animates cooling sounds by combining summer wind and the heat of a glass studio, which resembles the humidity of summer in Japan. Her blown glass kinetic piece was made in her hometown, Toyama, Japan. She adds her own playful touch to a common, traditional Japanese object through her way of hanging it, utilizing one of her recurring mediums: sculpting with steel wire.
From the gardens of Toronto Islands to the rainforest of Rimbun Dahan, the maturity of plants, vegetables, flowers and fruits has influenced the color palette of Chen's woven sculptures. Chen explores synthetic materials with rattan, using basketry techniques to mimic forms of invasive and local plants. She uses vegetation and flora from tropical to temperate climates to narrate the stories of hardship and resilience within the diaspora.
Inbakumar reflects on their travels across Asia, where for six months they explored many weaving and dyeing techniques, engaging with a deeper understanding of their own practice, reflecting on their personal growths and failings.
This show marks a landing point for their returns from traveling, making it both a retrospective and a prospective. Landbeing reflects on how living means being in relationship with space, whether as traveler or as resident, and various ways to collaborate, to adapt and commune.
Leeay Aikawa (b. Japan) is an interdisciplinary artist in T’karonto/ Toronto. She studied her MFA in Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art (2021) and BDes in illustration (2009) both at OCAD University. Her earth-based practice explores ways to heal from the psycho-spiritual pain we experience in an increasingly divisive moment in our history and concerns the holistic cycle of making, knowing, and being - ‘how she makes’ inspires ‘how she knows the world,’ which then inspires ‘how she be.’ Never settling on one particular medium or method, she often works with land, weather, seasons, and found objects to engage with the here (space) and now (time). Her work was included at Ignite Gallery (2024), Patel Brown (2023), Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts (2022), Hearth Gallery (2022) among others. She was hosted by Xpace Cultural Centre (2021) and Paradise Air Japan (2019) as an artist in residence. She worked as an assistant painter for the Michael Lin project at MOCA in 2020.
Kristi Chen is a multidisciplinary artist who uses sculpture and installation to explore the nature of identity, diaspora and methods of recultivating lost family archives. She graduated from OCAD University in 2021 with a BFA in Sculpture/Installation. Notable exhibitions include at Also a Good Place to Sulk, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto (2023), In the Rhubarb at Between Pheasants Contemporary, Kerns Township (2023), Are We Away? At Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto (2022) and Woven – Objects, Materials and Space(s) Beyond Measure at Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto (2021). She has upcoming exhibitions scheduled at Articule Gallery and the McClure Gallery in Montreal. Chen is currently participating at the Rimbun Dahan residency in Kuang, Selangor, Malaysia.
Akash Inbakumar is based in Takaronto and uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate storytelling, queerness, kinship and craft. They explore how craft objects, processes and material can play a part in familial storytelling and the passing of genealogy, as craft-kin. Through the use of textiles, performance and ceramics, they embark on building this speculative-world. Inbakumar graduated from OCAD University in 2020 with a BFA in Material Art and Design and continued their textile studies at Kawashima Textile School (Kyoto) in 2023. They have shown work in Canada and abroad: Kyoto City Art Museum, Textilmuseet Borås (Sweden), Art Gallery of Burlington, ArtAdress (Oakville) The Robert Mclaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto), Patel Brown Gallery (Toronto), and Xpace Cultural Center (Toronto).
Writers' Club
landbeing
Text by annik st-arnaud
a sensory immersion, a testament to the distance travelled
bringing together quests and practices
identities forming and becoming clearer
to make sense, we need to see ourselves in relation
it's the interaction that communicates the intention
it's the interaction that informs the very nature of our reality
leaving, arriving
simultaneously engaging the body
in action and in absence
catalysts for the stories
that anchor our steps in tangible knowledge
past – present – future
follow the edges to familiarise oneself with the shape, the folds, the material
venture into the day-to-day, the seasons, the temperature
perceiving all the points that connect us
to others, to land, to movement, to time
absorb and be absorbed by the materiality of a place
carry the exchange - perceive the familiar vibration
be a fixed point - fluid
to be whole - containing multiple boundaries
For any questions or requests concerning accessibility to the event or our gallery space, please contact James Goddard via email or by phone at 514-842-9686. For general accessibility information, please visit our dedicated page.
Please note that with the increase in COVID 19 and flu transmissions, masks must be worn for the duration of the events