Deanne Achong is based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She works across disciplines, including digital and lens-based projects and installation. Her practice draws from an examination of history, literature, digital culture, and daily life, exploring concepts of time, narrative, and archival ‘fictions’. In 2018, she established a daily drawing habit, one which acts as a counterpoint to her digital practice, and that often plays with the boundaries of domesticity and technology.
Deanne’s work has been exhibited in Canada, the US, the Caribbean, and Europe. She has been an artist-in-residence in Montreal, Quebec City, Trinidad, and Newfoundland. She has collaborated with many artists, and is currently working on a media project with Sarah Shamash, Recipes For Undomestication. She has created several public art projects, including a series of digital images for the City of Vancouver’s Platforms 2020 launching this fall.
Deanne has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and has sat on the board of several artist-run centers, including Other Sights for Artist’s Projects. In 2020, she was honoured as one of a group of women who are “pioneers of electronic literature” by ELO.
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About Pandemik Piks
Pandemik Piks is an interactive project based on a series of drawings originally conceived as an Instagram challenge, loosely based around the idea of hair. I drew a prong falling out of my hair clip on day 1, echoing my thoughts on the pandemic. Midway through the series, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and countless others filled the news. My feed became populated with black squares. As a response to these (ambiguous) squares, I began to scan, alter and reverse the drawings, creating exploding / flowering hair piks. This gesture also reflected a personal sense that the world is on fire.
This project reflects on forgotten stories, people, ordinary objects —the underbelly of the archive. The gaps, omissions and fragmented nature of the presentation echo the structure of the narrative, still unfolding. The animated drawings, when interacted with, bring up fragments of sounds and textual ephemera related to historical protests, riots and strikes that occurred throughout the Caribbean in the 1930s. “These images and sound bursts act as a metaphor for how social movements and moments of micro resistance fade and bloom, often going unnoticed, but still leaving their mark in tangible and intangible ways. “1
Footnote 1. Yun-Jou Chang, Curator
Instagram: @piquette
Twitter: @deanneachong
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