Roy Kiyooka, #3 Court, 1971, silkscreen, ed. 2/50. SFU Art Collection. Gift of Toronto Dominion Bank, 1998. Photo: Lief Hall.
Episode 2 | June 23
Christian Vistan and Kiel Torres on Roy Kiyooka
“to court is to crush
to court is to woo
to court is to peruse
to court is to pursue”
Roy Kiyooka (1926 – 1994) was a painter, photographer, musician, and poet, whose legacy is still profoundly felt in artistic and literary circles of the Northwest Coast. A regular participant in the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops in the 1950s in Saskatchewan, Kiyooka moved to Vancouver in the 1960s and taught at the Vancouver School of Art, where he explored various modes of abstraction. Christian Vistan and Kiel Torres honour Kiyooka’s work with a poetic response provoked by viewing his silkscreened print #3 Court (1971). They question how meaning is made through language, shapes, reflexes, and memory. While Vistan and Torres move through an exchange of impressions and relations, their dialogue embodies the playful and confined parlay of a court game.
Kiel Torres is a writer and editor who lives and works on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ Nations. Her work considers friendship, reading, embodiment, and fandom as apparatuses to navigate social and emotional worlds. Torres is a 2022 curatorial resident at Artspeak, and holds a BA in Art History from the University of British Columbia.
Christian Vistan is an artist from the peninsula now known as Bataan, Philippines, currently living and working on unceded and traditional xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Sc̓əwaθn Məsteyəxʷ, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ territories. They run dreams comma delta with Aubin Kwon, a space for artist projects and exhibitions located inside their family home in Delta, BC.
Podcast
Transcript
[Image Description: A squarish silkscreen of coloured ovals are grouped within a series of colour blocks. The centre shows a silver block, which is framed by a duotone one—with magenta above and a greyish purple below. Within the centre silver block, twelve ovals are in groups of four at the left and right, and two at the top and bottom. The ovals are in different solid colours: cobalt blue, lime green, and the same magenta and purple of the outer colours.]