FRANCISCO BERLANGA
Design and Social Media Coordinator
Francisco Berlanga is a contemporary artist who studied at Simon Fraser University. He obtained his BFA in Visual Arts with a minor in Interactive Arts and Technology. His practice is based on questioning identity, particularly his connection with his own Mexican culture and how one can inhabit a culture while being partially absent from it. He engages in discourse with his own identity through the creation of traditional Mexican “manualidades” or crafts, his work makes connections between traditional Mexican aesthetics and contemporary visual language. His practice engages with concepts of inaccessibility and the role memory and language can play when someone is distanced from their own culture. He attempts to bridge the gaps between his personal and cultural identities by forcing connections between them and trying to understand the limitations that these identities impose upon each other.
NATALIE CHAN
Assistant Coordinator
Natalie Chan is a contemporary artist based in Vancouver, Canada. She pursued her undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University and obtained her BFA in Visual Arts. Her practice focuses on the emotional relationships that connect people & places, as well as the unpacking of inner turmoils & complexities of the human condition. Often engaged with topics of trauma, she aims to create and facilitate spaces of reflection, healing, and reconciliation, offering them as tangible possibilities in each encounter with her artwork. Her latest interests include learning how to tattoo, in understanding the intimate relation between artist and the livelihood of their canvas & significance in mark making as a form of storytelling.
OPAL MCLEAN
Editor
Mclean is best described as the “selfish artist” meaning her practice entirely revolves around herself. Her work often relates back to a mental psyche that cannot be described by words alone. Instead, it can be described by an action. A reference to a state of being or a performance that lends to the way her brain functions. This manifestation and documentation of different processes becomes her tool to relate to the outside world. Her own existence comes into question in a way that so many experience in their own daily life. This experience becomes a social, cultural, and political connection to her projects. Her work becomes both alienating but connecting in a shared experience that translates through different media.