For more information, please see this video about the project by Mark Mushet and Vancouver Review Media
Coming Soon!
A project by Diyan Achjadi
Commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program.
Coming Soon! is a series of hand-pulled posters to be installed monthly on the fences and hoardings that surround construction sites. These temporary walls border sites that are in flux, the space previously defined having been through a process of erasure, and a new structure or function not yet fully realized. The sidewalks surrounding these sites are punctuated by trees bordered in orange, protecting them from the debris and activity of construction. At the heart of this project is an exploration of questions of value, temporality, and labour. What objects or structures do we choose to care for and preserve? And what actions do we see as worthwhile?
Each month, one to two prints will be issued, forming a publication of sorts, distributed on city walls. The images on the prints are derived from the landscape of construction sites: casual wood structures; safety nets and cones; piles of materials, tools, and dirt. A narrative is built between the prints, from one month to the next, from one site to another. Over the course of the year, as new buildings are completed and older buildings are demolished, the locations for the prints will necessarily move.
The prints are crafted by hand, using processes that were once meant for rapid reproduction and dissemination of information, but are now outdated for that function. Wheat-pasted onto temporary walls, the anachronistic prints will be in contrast to their surroundings, and vulnerable to the cumulative effects of the weather and the urban environment.
The artist respectfully acknowledges that this project is taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Project Locations
Rendition Developments Inc.: 5679 Main St and 494 Railway St
Onni Group: 399 East 1st Ave
PortLiving: Midtown Central at 702 East Broadway
Pennyfarthing Homes: 4988 Cambie St and 5030-5070 Cambie St
Locarno Legacy Corporation: 2468 Balaclava St
The project will also be displayed at Welk’s General Store at 3511 Main St.
About the artist:
Diyan Achjadi was born in Jakarta, Indonesia to a West-Javanese father and an English-Canadian mother, Achjadi grew up moving between Jakarta, Hong Kong, London, and Washington DC. She received a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, New York and an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal.
Achjadi's drawings, prints and animations have been exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and beyond, including at the Façade Festival (Vancouver, BC), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa, ON), Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina, SK), Richmond Art Gallery (BC), Art Gallery of Mississauga (ON), and Open Studio (Toronto), and including solo presentations at Centre MAI (Montreal), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Victoria), Oboro (Montreal) and AIR Gallery (New York, NY), among others. Achjadi currently resides in Vancouver, BC, where she is an Associate Professor of Art at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
All prints by Diyan Achjadi with the assistance of Tajliya Jamal
Lithography printing assistance by Andrew McKay
Photography and website by Harry Armstrong
Installation assistance by Marcus Denomme
Thank you to Tatiana Mellema and Karen Henry (City of Vancouver): Judy Davis, William Newhouse, Rodney Konopaki, Beth Howe, Vanessa Hall-Patch, Leslie Urquhart, Shin Minegishi, and Shannon McKinnon (Emily Carr University) and Susan Grossman.