This vernissage event and roundtable discussion, a collaboration between the Super Boat People Collective, COHDS, and Concordia University Library, introduces and celebrates the launch of the “What Travels Through Us: Exhibition,” on display at Concordia University Library from September 12 until December 12, 2024.

The Super Boat People Collective is happy to present the exhibition born from the project "What Travels Through Us: Family History Workshops." From Fall 2023 to Spring 2024, the project brought together a cohort of fifteen participants of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese descent, whose families were affected by war and exile. Organized in the form of sharing and creation circles, these workshops encouraged participants to delve into the layers of their family histories, often fragmented and intricate. In each session, guided by a documentarist or an artist of Asian descent who incorporated these experiences into their practice, participants explored a variety of mediums and approaches.

This community art exhibition is the imperfect culmination of the cohort’s reflections, sharing and work. For most of the participants, this is the first time that they have created such work, and for a general public. Artworks, everyday objects, crafts, interview extracts, personal notes, archives blend together within a setting that echoes domestic spaces, to evoke the character both familiar and strange of each person's family past. These are candid, magnificent and touching works, slowly thought out and shaped. They speak, among other things, of attachment, filiation, memory, silence, absence, gift, gratitude, departure and discovery. We also aimed to highlight the calming and restorative power of the group, along with the collaborative essence of the entire process.

The vernissage and round-table event delves deeper into the process of the workshops, the community and family memory work of participants, as well as the collaborative process of taking this public through the exhibition. The roundtable discussion will center on the transmission of family histories and memory in the context of exile, and how oral history, the arts and family histories intersect in the process of memory work. The participants and co-curators will also introduce the exhibit and the works, the process of their creation. 

What Travels Through Us: Exhibition Vernissage and Roundtable

What Travels Through Us: Exhibition Vernissage and Roundtable

Event Info

Hosted By:

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling

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