Mami Wata's Heritage
Bernadette Phan and Valérie d. Walker
May 14 - June 25, 2022 | Strathcona
This exhibition by Valérie d. Walker and Bernadette Phan is an homage to our mothers and foremothers, the life givers and transmitters of our creative gifts. The gracious determined survivors of diasporic migrations, colonial takeovers, wars, who will always love us, their powers kept us safe. The works presented propose a blues song of love, lament, hidden stories, social change and awe. It is our intention to bring forth these confluent herstories, memories and transmissions with gratitude and humility. We want to celebrate their strength and courage, amidst many hardships, to provide and nourish the future.
In our respective fields, we are both engaged in an embodied practice and invest ourselves in quotidian gestures that demand repetition, labor and care. Haptic perspectives are incorporated into the materiality of processes, whether they are situated in: the tending of the indigo vat and slow-dyeing of the fabric, the Afro-futuristic photographs of Valerie; the active quietude of stipple paint by Bernadette. A common thread the artists share is the notion of water as essential, elemental, migratory. Water is flow and dispersion, it permeates every surface. It is memory, the protective feeling of floating in the womb, a bond of safety, freedom. The works unfold into layers, ripples, and waves. Embodying the seen and the unseen, an experiential trust in the gestation, experience and patience needed for a desirable outcome. They meditate on beauty and horror that exist side by side as we are all witnessing at this time. The multivalent narratives proposed in these sensuous idioms usher us in the now to experience our interconnections and reflect on what makes us strong in our fragility.
The percepts in the gallery offer a respite to the somatic hardship and endemic anxiety we are all undergoing. Our heritage is an invitation to spark joy and spread seeds of peace with our every breath for future generations. "Mami Wata's flow"- is an offering to perpetuate a sustainable loving transmission.
In our respective fields, we are both engaged in an embodied practice and invest ourselves in quotidian gestures that demand repetition, labor and care. Haptic perspectives are incorporated into the materiality of processes, whether they are situated in: the tending of the indigo vat and slow-dyeing of the fabric, the Afro-futuristic photographs of Valerie; the active quietude of stipple paint by Bernadette. A common thread the artists share is the notion of water as essential, elemental, migratory. Water is flow and dispersion, it permeates every surface. It is memory, the protective feeling of floating in the womb, a bond of safety, freedom. The works unfold into layers, ripples, and waves. Embodying the seen and the unseen, an experiential trust in the gestation, experience and patience needed for a desirable outcome. They meditate on beauty and horror that exist side by side as we are all witnessing at this time. The multivalent narratives proposed in these sensuous idioms usher us in the now to experience our interconnections and reflect on what makes us strong in our fragility.
The percepts in the gallery offer a respite to the somatic hardship and endemic anxiety we are all undergoing. Our heritage is an invitation to spark joy and spread seeds of peace with our every breath for future generations. "Mami Wata's flow"- is an offering to perpetuate a sustainable loving transmission.
About Bernadette Phan
As a Vietnamese- Canadian visual artist Thanh Marie Bernadette Phan has evolved in many locations and with a multitude of influences that is in permanent flux, from her schooling in Montreal and Philadelphia to her immersion in the Kwakwaka'wakw community of Alert Bay, BC. Over the years, the art practice and daily life have become intertwined and affect every decision. Bernadette's intra-cultural background is present in her use of traditional media of painting, drawing and weaving to articulate percepts of embodiment, vulnerability and active presence. It is a pursuit, a dialogue for propositions that evade answers and a source of “don’t know mind” which allow the works to communicate from the tipping point, this verge between familiarity and facing the unknown.
About Valérie d. Walker
Valérie d. Walker is a Neo-Renaissance Artist, transmedia creator, alchemyst, Indigo Griot, Black Hawai’ian Latinex Japanese Scots, Femme Afro-Futurist time traveler. She holds Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) & Chado (tea ceremony) instructor level degrees with Urasenke-Kyoto, epigentic + lived Indigo knowledge. Walker landed on Gaia in Honolu’lu, and travelled the planet in space and time. Her artworks explore enviro-positivity with capaciousness interweaving natural dyeing, Shibori-Zomé (hand shaped resist), Katazomé (hand-cut stencil printing), Quotidian Femme-life actions, sensorially immersive fibre-based installations, solar-powered circuit-bending, Story-telling, Black Panther-esque activism and Guerilla-Grrrl radio. Valérie was welcomed to the unceded lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Sell With (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations by Chief Marilyn Gabriel.
In Conversation | Bernadette Phan and Valérie d. Walker discussing their collaboration
"Mami Wata’s Heritage A swirling watery celebration of life"
by Mark Mushet for Galleries West
The swirling, shimmering works in Mami Wata’s Heritage, a two-person show at the Mónica Reyes Gallery in Vancouver, are intended as an homage to motherhood and creativity. Featuring work by Vancouver-based artists Bernadette Phan and Valérie d. Walker, the show also evokes the travels, travails and survival of myriad diasporas, who relentlessly pursue available paths, carrying seeds to unknown shores. But as suggested by its title, which evokes a water spirit venerated in Africa and amongst its diaspora, the main unifying element of this show, on view until June 11, is the motif of flowing water. Whether you prefer to quote Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu or martial arts master Bruce Lee, the message here is seemingly to be as water.
The artists are paired well in terms of their contrasting techniques and the materiality of their work. Cambodian-born Phan uses surface stippling, allowing the play of light and viewing angle to give the impression the paint is growing from the canvas, while Walker, who was born in Honolulu, presents digital collages that rely on technologically mediated processes to create a sense of depth. Both artists marshal repetition and meticulous ordering to convey a sense of natural flow reminiscent of fabrics or waves rippling in a breeze.
Phan’s stippled paintings have evolved over the years from small concentric forms (some iterations are included in this show) to larger works with more variation, which increases their impact. Afloat and Peace Song are standouts. They feel like fabric that has been tossed into the air and left to settle before viewers. Both meditative and sensuous, they somehow seem to remain in motion. Nocturnal Dip and Download are moodier. In the former, it’s as though a blue net is cast over a dark sea, while the latter feels as if it’s draped across dark globe.
Walker’s works lack the immediate tactility of Phan’s paintings, yet they do play with texture and perspective. Her statement references Afrofuturism, which seems present in Elephants and Rhinoz in the Sky, which evokes traditional animal sculptures, their forms crafted from indigo-dyed fabrics. They seem to make their way across the sky above a desert plain.
Golden Waters reads as an aerial image of a delta at desert’s edge, with blue ribbons feeding into an indigo ocean. Indigo Waterflows is also concerned with the aqueous, but here they collide and fold back into one another like an eddy. Tournesol Phaz7 looks like a spread of indigo and tan fabric that has been cinched and pulled upward. It also resembles an aerial view, although the title’s use of the French word for sunflower also evokes something floral. It converses well with Phan’s stippled works.
The artists propose the show as “a blues song of love, lament, hidden stories, social change.” The connections between music and visual art are always personal. I don’t hear the blues in relation to any of these pieces. I imagine a vaster scale – a score of massed voices, awash in endless lush ambiences, shifting and slowing the perception of time.
Like much recent art, both bodies of work seem birthed by a desire to come to terms with creating beauty amidst cascading global catastrophes, including yet another massive refugee crisis. These works can be read as an affirmation that creating art can carry us, like water, around whatever obstacles present themselves.
Or, as the artists put it, they are spreading “seeds of peace.”
I think we can all appreciate that about now.
May 24, 2022 | Mark Mushet for Galleries West
The artists are paired well in terms of their contrasting techniques and the materiality of their work. Cambodian-born Phan uses surface stippling, allowing the play of light and viewing angle to give the impression the paint is growing from the canvas, while Walker, who was born in Honolulu, presents digital collages that rely on technologically mediated processes to create a sense of depth. Both artists marshal repetition and meticulous ordering to convey a sense of natural flow reminiscent of fabrics or waves rippling in a breeze.
Phan’s stippled paintings have evolved over the years from small concentric forms (some iterations are included in this show) to larger works with more variation, which increases their impact. Afloat and Peace Song are standouts. They feel like fabric that has been tossed into the air and left to settle before viewers. Both meditative and sensuous, they somehow seem to remain in motion. Nocturnal Dip and Download are moodier. In the former, it’s as though a blue net is cast over a dark sea, while the latter feels as if it’s draped across dark globe.
Walker’s works lack the immediate tactility of Phan’s paintings, yet they do play with texture and perspective. Her statement references Afrofuturism, which seems present in Elephants and Rhinoz in the Sky, which evokes traditional animal sculptures, their forms crafted from indigo-dyed fabrics. They seem to make their way across the sky above a desert plain.
Golden Waters reads as an aerial image of a delta at desert’s edge, with blue ribbons feeding into an indigo ocean. Indigo Waterflows is also concerned with the aqueous, but here they collide and fold back into one another like an eddy. Tournesol Phaz7 looks like a spread of indigo and tan fabric that has been cinched and pulled upward. It also resembles an aerial view, although the title’s use of the French word for sunflower also evokes something floral. It converses well with Phan’s stippled works.
The artists propose the show as “a blues song of love, lament, hidden stories, social change.” The connections between music and visual art are always personal. I don’t hear the blues in relation to any of these pieces. I imagine a vaster scale – a score of massed voices, awash in endless lush ambiences, shifting and slowing the perception of time.
Like much recent art, both bodies of work seem birthed by a desire to come to terms with creating beauty amidst cascading global catastrophes, including yet another massive refugee crisis. These works can be read as an affirmation that creating art can carry us, like water, around whatever obstacles present themselves.
Or, as the artists put it, they are spreading “seeds of peace.”
I think we can all appreciate that about now.
May 24, 2022 | Mark Mushet for Galleries West