I am pleased to have the opportunity to introduce Together / Apart. The exhibition has taken shape through ongoing discussions and collaborations between Vancouver-based artists Rebecca Bair and Karice Mitchell, that explore their shared commitment to critical discourses in representation, especially vis a vis the Black female body. The seeds of the show began in dialogue with Karice Mitchell, shortly after she started her position as a Lecturer of photography at The University of British Columbia in 2021. Through her teaching in art and critical theory, and evolving body of photographic work, Karice has already significantly influenced the UBC and broader Vancouver artistic communities. Rebecca Bair is an interdisciplinary artist and influential educator and community advocate. Since graduating from Emily Carr University in 2020, Rebecca’s works have been exhibited widely in the Greater Vancouver area. Together, the artists have developed a collaborative exhibition that deploys obstruction and abstraction as theoretical frameworks. They deny or limit access to their images as wholes, but offer immersive fragments. The images invite intimacy and a close visual scrutiny with regards to the details of their constitution (CMYK process printing, gestural traces) which then dissolve and become dis-orienting upon approach. This denial in the works has an almost playful and regenerative quality in which to experience implication, sensuality, and politics of representation and identity as interactive processes.

—Althea Thauberger