Where Mountain Cats Live is a lush invitation for strengthening community bonds, while acknowledging the precarity that we often build our roots upon. Via table-based installation, prints, and accompanying artist’s books, artist Jenie Gao collapses layers of global and local colonization, childhood memories, and familial narratives of home, displacement, and perseverance, embedded in individual objects.
The centrepiece of this exhibition is the iconic ‘lazy Susan’ table, a post-colonial innovation emblematic of Chinese American and Canadian restaurants. The table features hand-carved images of rabbits and cats in a cyclical chase, from a story that Gao’s mother tells of her bravery while facing ‘mountain lions’ outside her childhood home on a mountainside in Keelung, Taiwan. The work captures a moment when a mother’s stories are suspended between a child’s imagination and an elder’s recollection, and as Gao deals with their present-day dilemmas: the predatory realtors encroaching upon their mother’s home in rural Kansas, increasing pollution and land destruction, and the stubborn resilience of native flora and fauna that nevertheless persist and return.
Where Mountain Cats Live is an investigation of material culture, an homage to the ‘imagination of the oppressed,’ and a love letter to Jenie Gao’s mother and extended communities who, in the face of many uncertainties, maintain a sense of home.
Join us for the opening reception and artist talk Thursday, December 4, from 6 pm to 8 pm and stay tuned for a workshop announcement!
About the artist:
Jenie Gao (they/she) has run an anti-gentrification arts business since 2014, specializing in printmaking, public art, social practice, and community storytelling. They consult for cultural organizations and the public sector on equity and ethics.
Jenie pulls from experiences as a person of Taiwanese-Chinese heritage and a descendant of working-class immigrants. Prior to founding their business, Jenie worked in the museum industry, public education, and lean manufacturing. Through their cross-section of experiences, Jenie has become attuned to issues of artists’ labour, cultural power, and institutional accountability. They run a paid apprenticeship program and have thus far mentored 25 emerging artists.
Jenie has a BFA in Printmaking/Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Their work is in 40 institutional collections including Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Princeton University, Cornell University, Stanford University, and the Library of Congress. Their recent exhibits include Museum of Wisconsin Art, Trout Museum of Art, Burnaby Village Museum, Cedarburg Museum, and South Bend Museum of Art. Their work has been included in publications such as PBS, Shoutout LA, and Fête Chinoise. Their art residencies include Women’s Studio Workshop in Kingston, New York; Art in the Park with Vancouver Board of Parks & Recreation: Decolonization, Art, & Culture; Ma’s House in the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton, New York; Iowa Lakeside Laboratory in Okoboji, Iowa; the Bubbler at Madison Public Library in Madison, Wisconsin; Artist Campaign School in Chicago, Illinois; Proyecto’ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Museo de Arte Moderno in Chile. They are a TEDx Madison speaker and gave a talk entitled The Power and Purpose of Creativity.
Jenie Gao is the recently appointed Executive Director of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. They live on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
Learn more about Jenie by visiting their:
Website at jenie.org
Instagram at instagram.com/jeniegao
Facebook at facebook.com/jeniesart
Bluesky at bsky.app/profile/jeniegao.bsky.social
Stay tuned for a workshop announcement in relation to this exhibition by following our Instagram or Facebook page!