BRAIDS: Co-residency and Collaborative Installation by Rua Minx and Aja Rose Bond
Residency: March 4 – 28, 2013
Installation: March 30 – April 27, 2013
Performance and Reception: Thursday, March 28, 2013 8pm
Access Gallery presents Braids a co-residency between emerging Vancouver artist Aja Rose Bond and RUA MINX, an experimental sound project founded by American artist Donna Huanca in 2002. Both artists have developed experimental sound, performance, and textile-based practices that explore the slippage between conceptual art, noise, fashion, craft, and design through the production of art objects, performances, and installation-based works. Playing with the concept of wearable, both are invested in developing works that serve as platforms or markers for social, interactive and collaborative happenings, using discarded clothing and fabrics to create installations that oscillate between the aesthetic and ritualistic.As Artists-in-Residence, they will transform the Access exhibition space into a working studio to collaboratively produce a series of garments, sound works, and an immersive installation. During this time the gallery will host public studio hours and a workshop introducing basic and experimental textile techniques. On March 28th, Access will celebrate the completion of the residency and the opening of the installation with a performance produced by Bond and RUA MINX. In preparation for the residency, Aja and Donna have created a blog entitled Braids of Braids to share ideas and inspiration.
Aja Rose Bond, a cofounder of the Strathcona Art Gallery (STAG), has built a name for herself in Vancouver’s arts, noise, and activist communities. She has held residencies at Hammock and Artbank, as well as exhibitions at STAG and Goonies. Her other projects and collaborations include; HYPERCRAFT Studio, The STAG (Strathcona Art Gallery) Library, Craft Pride Procession, Her Jazz Noise Collective, UNARC (Underground Network of Artist-Run Culture), WOEVAN (Witches of East Van), Seamrippers Craft Collective, Diadem (w/partner Gabriel Saloman), In Flux (w/members of Shearing Pinx), DJ Tapes and the Women’s Studies performance series co-produced w/VIVO Media Arts Center. Bond is an intermedia artist with background in music, craft and fashion respectively, drawing from the deep influence of D.I.Y. punk, feminisms and magick. Her intimate relationship with certain mystical traditions has informed her process which often includes the use of divination, symbols and geometry to align and reveal the more hidden elemental and energetic aspects of the work.
Born in Chicago, Huanca received a BFA from the University of Houston (2004) and studied at Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany (2009-10). The recent recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Huanca lived and worked in Mexico City in 2012. Huanca has developed a nomadic practice producing site-specific projects and exhibitions throughout the United States, Austria, Norway, Peru, Germany, and Korea. Although embodied in a wide variety of media, her work expresses a thorough engagement with linguistic experimentation. Huanca’s work conveys distinctive and precise observations on the function of the garment as an ever-evolving manner of language production and a traditional form of cultural transmission. The results are performative platforms that are a product of a compulsive attitude towards the search for material beacons and parallel experiences. This project will be Huanca’s first in Canada.
Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and the City of Vancouver.
Diadem Discos & Library 