Curated by GAS Collective (Gizem Candan and Steffi Sin Tung Ng), Community Conversations considers materials as entry points to explore the definition, practice and meaning of care.

Part of the collective’s ongoing Conversations series, this project builds on their shared interests in materiality, process-based practice, community building, and sustainable curatorial cycles. In collaboration with the artists Michelle Peraza and Seden Lai, the project explores how working with materials embodies the complexities of how we care and connect as communities in our current world.

Peraza and Lai both carefully process and push the limits of their materials: Peraza hand-transforms materials such as ashes and marigold into paints while reflecting on their colonial histories and connection to her identity, while Lai subverts the materiality of paper, metal, and found objects, challenging perceived notions of strength and permanence.

Together, the artists bring these inquiries into materiality and care into the gallery through a site specific mural and handcrafted sculptures. Looking into the sun, the moon, the stars, and the cardinal directions, the conventional ‘white-cube’ gallery is transformed into an open, process-driven studio. Visitors are invited into alternate cosmologies where they can carefully attend to their surroundings, reorient themselves, and reflect on what it means to care and build reciprocal relationships among communities.

Two hands-on workshops on natural paint-making (OCT 24) and sculpture-making (OCT 25) will be hosted to activate the gallery space as a studio. They offer visitors opportunities to feel, touch, and process the materials together in a low-barrier setting through careful methods.

Through conversations and the collective act of making, Community Conversations engages visitors with care as a complex, fluid set of relationships embodied through materials and cycles of life.