Dialogues
unpruned tomato vines:
a conversation
Friday, May 28, 6:30-8:00PM
In the summer of 2019, Tea Base transformed what was once a pile of bricks sitting in the Chinatown Centre mall courtyard into the Anti-Displacement Garden; a place that welcomed public use and community gathering. In historically immigrant and working class neighborhoods across North America, surveillance and gentrification are happening hand-in-hand and making our cities less livable. In the face of attempts to police and price-out Black, Indigenous, racialized communities, Tea Base experiments with actions that nurture solidarity and nourish community power. Join Tea Base organizers and artists Christie Carrière, Hannia Cheng, Jason Li and Florence Yee for exchanges on art-based collective action and reflections from the Coast-to-Coast Chinatowns Against Displacement Week of Action.
The unpruned tomato vines digital exhibition is on view until Monday, May 31st.
PANELISTS
Christie Jia Wen Carrière (Multidisciplinary artist and co-creative director at Tea Base)
Hannia Cheng (Artist, MC and co-founder of Tea Base)
Jason Li (Artist, designer and creator of Tea Base VR)
Florence Yee (Artist and co-director of Tea Base)
MODERATOR
Mitra Fakhrashrafi (Mayworks Festival curatorial coordinator)
Tea Base and Friends of Chinatown Toronto’s Anti-Displacement community garden in the Chinatown Centre courtyard.
Christie Jia Wen Carrière
(she/her), who also goes by Chris, is a painter, illustrator, rug-maker and artistically curious individual. Chris is intrigued by, and aims to explore the nuances of the in-between. In-between her own ethnic identities; in-between culture and familial nostalgia; community and alienation. Currently, she is working as a painting instructor, a free-lance illustrator, as well as the Co-Creative Director at Tea Base. In this role, Chris has collaborated with MOCA, Myseum, the AGO, The Gladstone Hotel, Mayworks, and others. She obtained her BFA in Drawing & Painting with an Art History minor from OCAD University. Since March 2020, Chris has been living and working out of the 4 walls of her bedroom, somewhere in Tkaronto/Toronto.
Hannia Cheng
is a multidisciplinary artist, space maker, and host/MC born and raised in Tkaronto/Toronto. At the intersection of relationships and reciprocity, their practice focuses on art as the common ground in which we build capacity to make stuff up and make shit happen. Hannia is curious about ways of resilience and the speculative-futures that exist in the greater unknown of our daily lives. They’ve collaborated with Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Pride, Toronto Biennial, Nuit Blanche Scarborough, Toronto Fringe Festival, Manifesto Festival, Bricks & Glitter Festival and more. Hannia is the Co-Founder of Tea Base, a curious community arts space and collective based out of Chinatown Centre. They currently organize with Friends of Chinatown Toronto (FOCT), a grassroots group working to build community power and resist displacement in Chinatown.
Jason Li
(he/him) is an independent designer, artist and educator. His practice revolves around promulgating bottom-up narratives, exploring networked technology and helping people live safely on the internet. Previous works have appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Asian Art Museum, and on the BBC. He is a co-author of the forthcoming Hanmoji Handbook, an editor at Paradise Systems and a member of Zine Coop.
Florence Yee
is a Cantonese-struggling visual artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/Montreal whose practice focuses on the intimacy of doubt through text-based art, sculpture, and textile installation. Their work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2020), the Mackenzie Gallery (2020), Gardiner Museum (2019), Centre A (2019), and Art Mûr (2018), among others. Along with Mattia Zylak, Yee co-founded The Institute of Institutional Critique™ in 2019. They are currently the Co-Director of Tea Base, a grassroots collective in Tkaronto’s Chinatown. They obtained a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from OCAD U. They are represented by Studio Sixty-Six.
Mitra Fakhrashrafi
Beginning in street art, Mitra (she/her) is a mixed media artist and curator indebted to border abolition organizing and interested in all-things-Toronto; a since-always queer, trans, Indigenous, Black and diasporic city.