Laiwan

Life

Laiwan was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1961 Her family emigrated to Canada in 1977 to leave the war in Rhodesia. She graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1983. In 1999, she received an MFA from Simon Fraser University School for Contemporary Arts, also in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she currently lives. She is an interdisciplinary artist interested in poetics and philosophy. She was a founding member of the Or Gallery where her intent was to dispel the myths about the impossibility of starting and running a gallery, anyone can do it, including women, and the starting of the Or proves this. She was Chair of the grunt gallery Board of Directors from 2010-2014. She currently teaches in the Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College in Washington State.

Artistic practice

Laiwan investigates embodiment through performativity, music and audio works, in a variety of media. Her work unravels and engages in idea of presence by way of bodily and emotional intelligence. Her work is held in Vancouver Art Gallery collection, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Collection, and other private collections, and her time-based work is available from Video Out (VIVO) in Vancouver, and V-Tape in Toronto.

Early Work

In Laiwan's slide sequence work, The Mesmerization of Language: The Language of Mesmerization she deals with language as a structure which has a life independent of its conveyed meaning. The first part of the work, Laiwan translates the Lord's Prayer from sign language into words, deconstructing and breaking apart the text, phrase by phrase, word by word, letter by letter. The second part of the project reverses the dryness of the language into saturated colourful abstractions.

Stephen Hogbin describes in the exhibition catalogue Political Landscapes I held at at Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery. that Laiwan's work examines the political relationship of geography and identity.

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