They felt like time had stopped when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
And the 15 members in the Vancouver Korean Artist Collective — the leading group for Korean–Canadian artists in Metro Vancouver — wanted to capture that quiet downtime, those “lost” two years due to the global virus.
“We wanted to say something about that,” the collective’s president, SungEun Park, told the Tri-City News on Wednesday (March 30).
“We were reflecting and re-evaluating various aspects of our lives as we were creating.”
On April 7, 11 VKAC members will show 90 pieces made during the pandemic in a group exhibit at PoMoArts titled Re: Through the Times.
The four participating Tri-City artists are
- SungEun Park, a Coquitlam resident and an art instructor at Place des Arts who works with yarn, paper and felt to create works about space and humanity
- Ysabella Choung, a Port Moody resident and PoMoArts’ new ceramic studio technician who also runs Spatial Ceramic Art Studio in Moody Centre
- Lena (Eunyul) Han of Coquitlam, a member of the Port Moody Art Association who is known for her portraits of people and animals
- Kyung-Ah Hwang, a Coquitlam resident who paints florals with acrylics
Park said the exhibiting art presents a range of mediums — such as painting, traditional Korean art, photography, mixed media and ceramics — and styles through various compositions, colours and geometric patterns.
It is the first in-person display for the collective since March 2020.
“Before the pandemic, we had our own gallery in Gastown, where we held exhibitions very often,” Park said.
“However, we had not done that for a while due to the surrounding circumstances, so our members are very eager to come out into the world again and show their artworks at this show.”
The opening reception for Re: Through the Times is on April 14 from 6 to 8 p.m. at PoMoArts (formerly the Port Moody Arts Centre). The venue is located at 2425 St. Johns St., Port Moody. The reception is free, refreshments will be served and the artists will be in attendance. Visit pomoarts.ca.
