Phoebe Bei

Part of Griffin’s “Through a BIPOC Lens” Residency Series

Phoebe Bei is an emerging interdisciplinary artist whose practice addresses politics of land, cultural memories, and collective identities. Working largely in photographic processes and installations, her research is rooted in critical studies on ‘the image’ and representation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land and how land is occupied, manifested and disseminated in our production of place, culture and identity. Currently, she has found fictitious unions between disparate subjects like land, language, affect, and body/bodies constructive in her understanding of self as an inconclusive and often confusing entity. However, it is through an exchange in dialogues—this sifting of what is retained, projected and disposed of that she has found fertile in informing her contemporary conditions.

Bei holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is a current resident at WEDGE Residency organized by the Contemporary Art Gallery and Ground Floor. In this residency, she is working with an archival recording to create a spatial reconstruction of a political moment specific to Vancouver and its art communities. Bei is the recipient of the BMO 1st! Prize (BC) in 2018 and her work has been shown at Audain Gallery, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, James Black Gallery, Capture Photography Festival and Or Gallery. Originally from Edmonton Alberta/Treaty 6 territories, Bei is currently occupying and working on the unceded Coast Salish Territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Phoebe will be in residence for March-April 2023.