Diyan Achjadi

NEWS

I'm so honoured to be a recipient of the 2021 VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation. The award recognizes "mid-career artists chosen for outstanding achievement and commitment."

Hush, a new animation commissioned by Emily Carr University for the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, is currently playing at Urban Screen on the Wilson Arts Plaza at the Emily Carr campus until July 31, 2021, daily from 8 am to 9 pm. Please come by and visit!
More information on Hush can be found here.

Thursday June 25, 7:30 pm PST, please join me in the (online) launch of Coming Soon, generously hosted by the Contemporary Art Gallery.

Click here to RSVP for the event, and a link will be emailed to you on the day of the launch.

If you'd like to purchase the book, you can do so via the CAG bookstore
Stay tuned for details on the Coming Soon! book launch in late June!
Coming Soon! documents 12 months of prints made and posted as part of the year-long public art project for the City of Vancouver. Beautifully designed by Vicky Lum, with text by Zoë Chan and photography by Harry Armstrong.
(postponed)
Sat 04 Apr 2020 2–4PM at Access Gallery
Join Vancouver-based artist Diyan Achjadi in conversation with visiting artist Anna Binta Diallo as they discuss resonances in their practices, in the context of Diallo's collage-based installation, Wanderings. Relying heavily on visual research, memory, and assemblage, both artists work to reorganize and reimagine various cross-cultural narratives. Join the artists in considering how their practices align and differ—in material process, conceptual interest, familial/cultural experiences, and approach.

Girl in the City, a series of four short animations commissioned by the City of Vancouver as part of the Platforms series in 2011, will screen from March 16 – April 12, 2020 at the Robson and Granville video screens in downtown Vancouver. More information on the series of screenings can be found here.

Women's work is front and centre in new Burnaby Art Gallery exhibition

This fall, some works from the Girl series will be included in the exhibition Queer Forms at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in Minneapolis. "This multidisciplinary group exhibition and series of public programs investigates and celebrates the history, politics and culture of LGBTQ+ Liberation across a range of artistic forms and perspectives. Queer Forms coincides with the anniversary of these important historical markers in the history of LGBTQ+ Liberation: the 50th anniversary of the establishment of FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression), a Gay student organization at the University of Minnesota, and the Stonewall Rebellion in New York in 1969; and the 60th anniversary of the resistance to police harassment of LGBTQ+ people at Cooper’s Donuts in Los Angeles in 1959."

Coming up in July: Mantle, at the Evergreen Cultural Centre, curated by Katherine Dennis. I'll be showing the next iteration of Drift for this group show of artists that "explore the transformation of organic materials and draw learning from knowledge holders (be they people, land or other forces). The resulting artworks, which take the form of sculpture, photography, video, drawing and painting, draw attention to the interconnectedness of humankind and geology."

Honoured to be included in this exhibition of new drawing acquisitions at the Burnaby Art Gallery this summer.

VR Media made this beautiful short documentary of the Coming Soon! public art project. Please watch if you want to learn more about my year of printmaking and postering in Vancouver.

I made this drawing for VR Media's HiDef Editions. If you want to purchase a print, please contact VR Media directly at this link.

Sinking and Dip will be part of Nature As Communites at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, NS, opening May 3.

Residue: Tracing The Lore, my collaboration with Brendan Tang, is currently on view at Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, BC, as part of the exhibition (Dis)Connect. I'll be going there in June to talk about the work and do a printmaking workshop.

How far do you travel? has been getting some great press:

Art Seen: You don't see this very often, an artist talk on a moving bus by Kevin Griffin

Town Talk: Emily Carr Prof Gives Transit Bus an Indonesian Makeover by Malcolm Parry

Translink buses moving art, and people around Metro by Kevin Griffin

New Project Turns Vancouver Buses into Moving Public Art by Leah Sandals

Here's a video of the curator of How far do you travel?, Kimberly Phillips, speaking about the project and my work for this exhibition:
How Far Do You Travel?

Up next: I'm super excited to be part of How Far Do You Travel?, produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery in partnership with Translink. More information soon!

Memories of the Future III, curated by Katherine Dennis. reviewed in Canadian Art:
Review: Diyan Achjadi and Cindy Mochizuki at the Roedde House Museum, Vancouver, September 25 to November 18, 2018 by Joni Low

Coming Soon!, my year long public art project, reviewed in Galleries West:
Diyan Achjadi: Coming Soon! Gorgeous prints posted on hoardings around Vancouver construction sites address anxieties about urban change by Mark Mushet

image: Animation still, Hush, 2021

Diyan Achjadi is a Vancouver-based artist who explores the ways that surface ornamentation and illustrated printed matter can function as archives documenting the circulation of ideas in visual form. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, her formative years were spent moving between multiple educational, political, and cultural systems.

Diyan received a BFA from the Cooper Union (New York, NY) and an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal, QC). She has exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and beyond. Recent projects include Hush, an animation commissioned by Emily Carr University for the City of Vancouver Public Art Program (2021); NonSerie (In Commute), part of How far do you travel?, a year-long exhibition on the exterior of public buses, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG) in partnership with Translink BC (2019); and Coming Soon!, a monthly series of prints installed at sites slated for construction and development, commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, documented with a book-length publication in 2020. In 2021, Diyan was a recipient of the VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation

Diyan is a Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.