NEXT: Provisional Structures | Carmen Papalia with Co-Conspirators

with Rebel Fayola Rose (Founder of Disability Justice Dreaming), Sharona Franklin, Catherine Frazee and Gabrielle Peters (Disability Filibuster Against Bill C-7), Heather Kai Smith, and The Curiosity Paradox

Carmen Papalia is a Vancouver-based, non-visual artist working in the realm of social practice. His artwork is concerned with unsettling traditions of cultural ableism, which he achieves by centring and affirming disability cultures in environments and places where members of the broader disability community are underrepresented. Papalia develops participatory projects that reveal non-visual sensory landscapes, demonstrating the possibilities of creative and justice-oriented accessibility practices.

This exhibition presents a new site-specific project by Papalia that asserts different models for collective care and Disability Justice. The installation features an imaginative accessible structure within the Gallery, which frames a gathering space where other voices and narratives from the contemporary disability movement are introduced. The exhibition also includes a dedicated programming space, which will host a full slate of workshops and talks, a resource library and contributions from a number of guest artists to further develop key ideas and conversations within the exhibition.

NEXT: Provisional Structures: Carmen Papalia with Co-Conspirators is the twentieth instalment in NEXT: A Series of Artist Projects from the Pacific Rim. This series highlights works previously not seen in Vancouver and seeks to engage the diverse practices of Pacific Rim artists.