Swords 2 Ploughshares (Cut Piece 2 Sew Peace)
Performance, 24 October 2020, 1-4pm, Gertrude Guerin Plaza, Main/Kingsway
Anthropocene 2 Symbiocene (Bombers 2 Butterflies)
24 October 2020 through 27 December 2020
Organized by Steven Tong
In Swords 2 Ploughshares (Cut Piece 2 Sew Peace), David Khang de-commissioned his butterfly-covered, bicycle-powered tank. Invoking Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), public members were invited to participate in cutting pieces of fabric from the tank, to re-purpose them into sewn masks in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project functions as a fundraiser for legal defence of Indigenous land defenders and water protectors in British Columbia. The masks will continue to be produced until the fabric from the tank runs out. Masks can be ordered at: cutpiece2sewpeace@gmail.com
Anthropocene 2 Symbiocene (Bombers 2 Butterflies) is a body of work that Khang produced while studying in law school. Off-cuts from the fabric used to cover the tank were collaged with paper cut-outs to produce two thematic series composed of military and animal imagery. Metamorphosis of Turtle Island is a piece that Khang produced in lieu of an academic paper for a class on Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.
David Khang’s art practice is informed by education in psychology, theology, dentistry, and law. Khang imbeds these disciplinary codes into his work, to compose interdisciplinary languages in visual, textual, and spoken forms. In performing, Khang embodies these languages to interrogate social constructions of gender, race, and interspecies relations. By strategically switching languages and codes, Khang produces divergent and dissonant readings that re-imagine the poetic and the political.
Khang received his BSc and DDS from the University of Toronto, BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, and MFA with Empahsis in Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine. He has taught at Emily Carr University of Art & Design (2005–2016), and Goddard College (2009-2010). Khang was born in Seoul, grew up in Toronto, and currently resides in Vancouver, where he divides his time between art practice, dentistry, and studying law at the University of British Columbia (2016 – 2021).
