MAIN SPACE GALLERY
Through this window is a home
HARVEY NICHOL AND MICHAELA BRIDGEMOHAN
EXHIBITION DATES:
MARCH 29 - JUNE 1, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION:
FRIDAY, MARCH 29 — 7 PM TO 10 PM
In an assemblage of images, colours and scents, Harvey Nichol and Michaela Bridgemohan examine the Peacock Chair as a source of conceptual inspiration. Through this window is a home takes notice of the ways in which colonialism shrouds non-European cultures as mythic and/or non-existent. With its own speculative history, the Peacock Chair emerges as a phantom–an emblem of opulence and authority haunting domestic spaces. What is known is that it was born from the fingertips of incarcerated Filipina women who wove them in the early 1900s. Over the years, this chair has been infused with a variety of pop culture lore, including its association with figures like Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, before his assassination.
Through Nichol’s referencing of Philippine folklore and Manila prison blocks, and Bridgemohan’s use of West African craft, Through this window is a home explores themes of invisible labour and cultural erasure that collide with forms of resistance and privilege.
HARVEY NICHOL was born in the Tondo District, Metro Manila, and is currently a Calgary based artist. His work embodies elements of various art movements such as neo-expressionism, social-realism, and street art. Harvey dabbles in different mediums of art-making practices such as painting, sculptures, streetwear design, and storytelling. He is inspired by his life experiences as an immigrant, becoming a homeless youth, and living through the foster system. He wants to channel this through visual autoethnography with elements inspired by his culture's folklore and today's socio-political climate.
harveynichol.ca
Instagram: @harveynichol.ca
LinkTr.ee: @harveynichol.ca
MICHAELA BRIDGEMOHAN is an interdisciplinary artist of Jamaican and Australian descent who grew up in Mohkinstsis, also known as Calgary, but now gratefully resides on Syilx territory, Kelowna, BC. She is a recent MFA candidate from the University of British Columbia – Okanagan and received her BFA in Drawing (with Distinction) from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2017. Bridgemohan's artistic research currently engages with her Caribbean heritage through the folk-figure duppy to address contemporary conversations surrounding Afro-Gothic hauntology, relationality and hybridity. She uses methods of cultural practices such as cooking and personal grooming to explore contemporary sculpture, drawing and textile making.
Instagram: @michmohan