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Vancouver Art Gallery Debuts Sculptural Rebirth Performance
The Vancouver Art Gallery Presents Experimental Performance Sculptural Rebirth for the First Time in Canada
February 25, 2025, VANCOUVER, BC // Traditional Coast Salish Lands including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
The Vancouver Art Gallery is excited to present live performance Sculptural Rebirth 脱皮的彫刻, an experimental collaboration between Japanese artist Tadasu Takamine and art students from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD). The work—featuring music, plaster and live participants—exists in a space that crosses sculpture and performance.
“Presenting Sculptural Rebirth at the Vancouver Art Gallery reflects the Gallery’s commitment to traversing diverse artistic mediums and integrating durational art within the museum space,” says Eva Respini, Deputy Director & Director of Curatorial Programs. “As part of the Gallery’s Centre for Global Asias mandate, this performance represents a convergence of ideas, perspectives, artistic disciplines and new ways of experiencing art at the Gallery.”
Sculptural Rebirth 脱皮的彫刻 represents the experience of a life change in which one symbolically sheds an ill-fitting skin and moves on to a new phase of life. This durational performance features fourteen performers on a transformational journey from speaking subject engaging with the public, to a brief period of solitude in which their consciousness turns inward, before finally emerging anew. The themes of transformation and reemergence resonate powerfully with many moments in life and are particularly relevant to the process of art making. The title of the work is suggestive of the process of molting, in which a snake sheds its outer skin and enters a new developmental stage. This deeply moving performance is a rare opportunity for audiences to slow down and witness various phases of art making and transformation before their eyes.
Artist and educator Tadasu Takamine was born in 1968 in Kagoshima, Japan and is based in Tokyo. He employs various media including video, installation and stage performance to reveal buried social issues, often engaging with his own body and personal experiences. Takamine has developed a unique experimental live installation-performance practice through workshops with local participants over several decades, which he incorporates in much of his artwork. Takamine’s works can be laced with a sense of pain and frustration and are deeply personal.
This presentation is organized by Makiko Hara, Curator in Residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Hara has over three decades of experience in international contemporary art as an independent curator, producer, lecturer, performance artist and writer. Since relocating from Tokyo to Vancouver in 2007, she has continually challenged notions of cross-Pacific identity through an array of experimental curatorial practices. Hara recently guest curated Offsite: Pedro Reyes and Lani Maestro at the Gallery’s public outdoor art space, Offsite, and has worked on numerous art projects around the city. Hara’s focus at the Gallery is curating performance events and public art projects that bring a new layer of depth and understanding to the Gallery’s programs, as part of our mission to bring more interdisciplinary and live performance work into the Gallery spaces.
“I am excited to bring Sculptural Rebirth to life at the Gallery,” says Makiko Hara, Curator in Residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery. “The work is a transdisciplinary experiment between sculpture and performance developed over time and place. This trans-Pacific Vancouver presentation is a collaboration with Associate Professor Emily Hermant and features a group of bold students from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. I am eager to witness—with the audience—the process of physical and mental transformation of these incredible performers.”
Sculptural Rebirth 脱皮的彫刻 takes place on the 3rd Floor Rotunda at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Sunday March 2, 2025, at 2 PM. The performance is approximately 70 minutes long. Please note that capacity is limited, and seating will be first come, first served. The first 40 attendees will be seated in the performance space. The remaining attendees will have partial view of the performance and will be able to watch via a live stream from overflow space in the 3rd Floor gallery.
Sculptural Rebirth 脱皮的彫刻 is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery with the generous support of Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD) and their NSERC Mobilize grant. It is directed by artist Tadasu Takamine and curated by Makiko Hara, Curator in Residence. The ECUAD students’ participation is facilitated by artist and Associate Professor Emily Hermant with the assistance of Kyla Gilbert.
