We are thrilled to be back this year for another year of conversations with artists, writers, and creatives in residence at Centrum’s Artist Residency Program.

This year, we bring you a series of five conversations held in October 2022 among our cohort of Emerging Artists and Writers who took a moment out of their residencies to pair up and talk process and share experiences related to their various practices.

Christian Vistan and Josephine Lee illuminate the threads that connect their work and the ways that materials and water serve as keystones to both of their practices. Both of these artists, one working in painting and the other in bio-materials find that they share interests in the roles of regeneration, repair, and nourishment in their work.

Josephine Lee

Informed by a lifetime of movement through the United States, Canada, and South Korea, Josephine Lee’s interdisciplinary practice addresses the psychic violence of cultural assimilation and naturalization through migration, alongside issues of ecological and racial justice within technology. Lee received an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons, and is currently receiving a practice-based PhD in Contemporary Arts from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Lee has exhibited in Canada and the United States, and is a recipient of funding and awards from the BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Vera G. Sculpture Award, Oscar Kolin MFA Fellowship, American Craft Council, and College of Arts Association. Lee resides and works on the unceded and occupied ancestral and traditional lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Christian Vistan

Christian Vistan is an artist and curator originally from the peninsula now known as Bataan, Philippines, currently living and working in Vancouver and Delta, British Columbia on xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Sc̓əwaθn Məsteyəxʷ, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ territories. In their artworks, they translate embodied experiences of distance and diaspora into hybrid forms that fold together elements and processes that involve memory, place, poetry, and abstraction. They are particularly interested in working with water as a material in painting and in personal, familial, and migrant histories. They make paintings, texts, and exhibitions, and often collaborate with other artists, writers, and curators. Their artwork and curatorial projects have been presented in galleries in Canada, US and the Philippines. They received their BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2017. With Aubin Kwon, they run dreams comma delta, a room for artist projects and exhibitions located inside Vistan’s family home in Delta, BC.