Artist talk with Emily Falencki and Yujia Shi
Friday, February 27 from 6 to 8 pm in Gallery 209
Join us Friday, February 27 from 6 to 8 pm in Gallery 209 for a conversation with The Blue Building gallerist Emily Falencki and artist Yujia Shi.
As Relation: five emerging artists hits its final week, this is your chance to hear directly from the voices behind the work and soak it all in.
Talk:
Friday, February 27
6 to 8 pm
Gallery 209
Food + drink provided by Cafe Marie & Nanaxhi Traditional Tastes.
Exhibition ends:
Saturday, February 28 at 3pm
Yujia Shi 施雨迦 is a Chinese Canadian visual artist based in Kjipuktuk. Growing up in a historic neighbourhood in the heart of Beijing, Shi was immersed in intergenerational teachings, childhood mischief, and folklore of ghosts and spirits until an urban renewal project flattened their neighbourhood, displacing local residents and connections.
In 2009, Shi began a fourteen-year immigration process transitioning from an international student to Canadian citizenship. From the moment Shi passed through the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) processing center at Toronto Pearson Airport, their lived experience became subject to various conditions, permissions, and restrictions. These parameters regulated Shi’s movements and activities within the country, shaping the opportunities they could access to establish a livelihood.
Channeling a state of being: ungrounded and unable to land, Shi explores themes of displacement, dispossession and diasporic longing through mixed media drawing, site-responsive installation, community-based research and handmade animation. Most recently, Shi has begun revisiting their personal immigration archive and childhood folklore to examine place, memory and agency in the context of border crossing and migration.
Emily Falencki is an artist and the Founder/Director of The Blue Building Gallery in Halifax. Born and raised in New York City, Falencki moved to Nova Scotia to study at NSCAD twenty-five years ago and now lives and works between North End Halifax and Cape Breton Island.
In November 2019, Falencki purchased 2482 Maynard Street to provide a new kind of space for the Halifax arts community. The Blue Building Gallery opened in 2021, collaborating with internationally acclaimed artists with strong ties to the Atlantic region.
Today, the gallery continues to grow and supports a wide variety of artists at many stages in their careers.
Falencki also serves as Vice-Chair on the Board of Directors for the Inverness County Centre for the Arts. She completed her BFA at NSCAD University and her MFA at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland.
