Looking at Vancouver’s lack of representation for BIPOC artists
As a fellow artist, I felt it was necessary to take on the research that so many BIPOC artists already inherently know to share it with the Vancouver art community
Inspired by work done by Toronto artist Ibrahim Abusitta and a call-in by intersectional design researcher Jacquie Shaw, I sought out lists of artists from Vancouver galleries in the same manner that Abusitta had. Similar to Abusitta, I am not an investigative journalist or a statistician. For transparency, I’m a white, cis, female artist in the Vancouver arts community. I also work for an arts university, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, but this research and the accompanying essay was done independently from my position there.
This information is directed predominantly at fellow white people, as BIPOC artists know all too well the issues with representation. I based my spreadsheet on Abusitta’s, which I saw on Instagram.
I’ve known for a long time that we have a representation problem in the Vancouver art scene. After all, our largest gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, has a permanent exhibition of the artist the institution I work for is named after — that is, Emily Carr. To say Emily Carr is problematic is an understatement.
Vancouver often prides itself on being diverse or multicultural, a champion of Indigenous art, but when talking to BIPOC artists and designers, they share that you can smell the racism in the air. The galleries reflect this. There is no diversity in the gallery system that reflects the population of Vancouver.
In doing my research, I broke galleries down by commercial and by public or artist-run-centres. Commercial galleries focus on representation, having artists on their roster and selling their work. Public galleries and artist-run-centres pay artist fees, generally at the minimum set by CARFAC.
For commercial galleries, I pulled each gallery’s list of artists and looked at the individual artist and their portfolio website to read their bio. It helped substantially when artists self-identified as BIPOC, trans, non-binary, or female. I recognize that in some cases, information was unclear and I had to make a choice that I feel I am unqualified to make as a white woman.
As Abusitta points out, commercial galleries should be held to a higher standard as they are first and foremost a business as well as members of the arts and culture community.
Similarly, I looked at public galleries and artist-run-centres. I looked at their exhibitions curated for 2020, including those that may be rescheduled, shown in alternative ways, or postponed. I pulled each artist’s website and read their bio, again acknowledging that information may be unclear.
I also omitted artists who were in multiple shows at the same gallery. This was most typically found at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where an artist's work would be in multiple shows. I made this decision so the research reflects individual artists who have been paid at least once as opposed to artists who have been paid multiple times.
There are also a number of “galleries” in Vancouver that operate more like stores that specialize in Indigenous art. I struggle to include these galleries as they are known to be exploitative and including them would excuse the representation problem of contemporary galleries. They also lack transparency in which artists they represent.
In 2016, the Vancouver census reported that more than 50% of the population identified as non-white. However, within Vancouver galleries, less than 20% of the artists who are represented identify as BIPOC, and of artists who have shown in galleries that receive public funding, less than 40% of artists who identify as BIPOC have been paid CARFAC fees. This number may be lower and depends on whether the gallery actually pays artists.
I have uploaded these spreadsheets into Google Sheets so anyone can look at them with more scrutiny. The asterisks represent anomalies in my research, such as postponed shows we may never see, an unclear curatorial calendar, or an adjustment in programming since the research began.
An example of such is the public-private art collection of Vancouver developer Bob Rennie, who’s museum happens to be showing two of the five Black artists exhibiting in public galleries. The Rennie Museum is open to the public by appointment which points to an issue of accessibility.
There is also the monolith of the Vancouver Art Gallery, who had information that was less than transparent and harder to access. I recognize that there may be errors in the information I was able to pull, but the overall figures should remain approximately the same. If anything, I believe there are some old white men I was unable to confirm.
I recognize that this research is imperfect at best and am open to developing it further so it can be a useful tool for artists. There are galleries I may not know of, and galleries that are hard to identify as public/ARC or commercial. This was meant to capture a cross-section of most Vancouver galleries and will be a living document that I continue to update as more information comes to light.
In the future, I would like to expand this beyond Vancouver, looking at the cities surrounding Vancouver where many of our artists live, including but not limited to Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, and New Westminster. I would like to ensure that we look at the demographics of self-identified artists in the GVA either by survey or by working alongside a non-for-profit that already has this information.
To advocate for change from within the arts community, I’d like to close this letter by recommending a conversation template posted by artist Klea McKenna on Instagram:
I commit to having this conversation as part of the ongoing goal to dismantle the systemic and colonial aspects of the art world.
