Artspeak

10/14/2026

BOOK LAUNCH REMINDER!

Join us this Saturday, October 17 at 6 PM at Artspeak Gallery as we celebrate the launch of Speaking in Tongues: Visual Language in African Cinema(s), marking the culmination of our Curator-in-Residence Kikachi Memeh’s year-long research and curatorial work.

Edited by Kikachi Memeh, with contributions from Chrystel Olukoï and Ogheneofegor Obuwoma, Speaking in Tongues considers film as a vehicle for oration and an instrument for manipulating language through visual expression. Moving beyond foundational canons of African cinema, the publication proposes new vernaculars for encountering contemporary African filmmaking.

📍 Artspeak Gallery, 233 Carrall St, Vancouver
📅 Saturday, October 17, 2026
🕕 6 PM

We look forward to gathering in celebration. Free and open to all. We hope to see you there!

10/07/2026

Congratulations to JOMA studios on a stunning partnership with Vancouver Design week. Their off-site exhibit "Seeing Sound" is on view at 320 Carrall St through to December 12th 2026.

Looking ahead: October 17 6pm Speaking In Tongues: Visual Language in African Cinema(s) edited by Kika Memeh, book launch!

10/03/2026

Join us October 17 2026 @ 6PM 233 Carrall St

We are thrilled to celebrate the launch of Speaking in Tongues: Visual Language in African Cinema(s), edited by Kikachi Memeh, and the culmination of her position as Curator in Residence at Artspeak.

Developed through a year of research, conversation, and curatorial inquiry, Speaking in Tongues interrogates film as a vehicle for oration and an instrument through which language is manipulated, translated, and reimagined through visual expression.

Bringing together essays by Kikachi Memeh, Chrystel Olukoï, and Ogheneofegor Obuwoma, the publication moves beyond the orbit of pioneer African filmmakers and foundational canons to consider the languages and possibilities emerging from contemporary African cinema(s). Together, the writers offer a new vernacular for encountering the moving image—one attentive to the ways cinema speaks across image, sound, gesture, place, and form.

Join us as we celebrate the culmination of Memeh’s Curator-in-Residence work and the launch of Speaking in Tongues.

Speaking in Tongues: Visual Language in African Cinema(s)
Edited by Kikachi Memeh
Published by Artspeak
Designed by Losso

09/23/2026

On view in our off-site:

"Seeing Sounds" (TR) Project 001 a speculative listening room built by four artists Jefferson Alade, Kristen Liston, Losso Silva, and Andrew Tavukciyan on display as part of Design Vancouver Festival, September 17 to 27, 2026. Working across textile, object, graphic design, and sound, the artists come together to make the invisible tangible, examining how shared experience and cultural knowledge live not in language but in frequency, texture, and presence. The room asks what sound says when words fall short, and offers an answer built to be felt as much as heard.   

In person gallery programming: Saturday September 26 2026. Link in bio!

Sensational Listening Sessions 

Sensational Listening Sessions is an evening at the intersection of sound, visual art, and collective making designed in response to Michelle Pearson Clarke's exhibition at Artspeak Gallery on the occasion of Design Vancouver Festival. Participants are asked to think through the concept of collective memory, how cross-modal perception, sensation, and shared experience can be held, shaped, and made tangible, and are invited into a hands-on design workshop to build a collective vessel in response to the exhibit. 

The Ryze is a channel for collective listening, creating DJ programs, sonic installations, and curatorial collaborations that foreground global artists and sound cultures. Founded in 2020 by JOMA Studios, The Ryze is helmed by Jefferson Aladé, and in 2025, the addition of two residents Losso Silva and Kristen Liston, The collective is concerned with visual design, creative direction, design research, music curation, and program development.

09/12/2026

Tomorrow! 233 Carrall Street, Vancouver

Free and open to all. We look forward to welcoming you!

Artist Michele Pearson Clarke Michele Pearson Clarke and Director/ curator Nya Lewis

2:15 PM — Screening

Conversation + Audience Q&A
45-minute conversation and audience Q&A.

Reception
After the conversation, Artspeak will remain open for an additional hour. Stay with us for reception & refreshments by Your favorite auntie

09/07/2026

Fall programming details in your inboxes as we speak!

Many thanks to our mailer community, your support and feedback helps us deliver generative events and gatherings.

Want to stay in the loop? We are updating our lists, send an email to [email protected] to be added.

Looking ahead: Michele Pearson Clarke at Artspeak September 12th

09/05/2026

Artspeak warmly welcomes artist Michele Pearson Clarke!
In Conversation: September 12 2026 @ 2pm with Director/curator Nya Lewis in celebration of the opening of "Red and White and Black and Gold"

Please note space is limited, reception to follow artist talk.

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a visual artist, writer and educator. Working primarily in photography and video, her work situates grief as a site of possibility for social engagement and political connection. Born in Trinidad and based in Toronto, her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally including at La 3ra Gran Bienal Tropical, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, (Austria), MOMENTA Biennale de l’image (Montreal), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg), the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Royal Ontario Museum, Lagos Photo Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Maryland Institute College of Art, ltd los angeles, The Image Centre, and Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. Clarke is the recipient of the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts 2019 Finalist Artist Prize, she was shortlisted for the 2023 Sobey Art Award, and most recently she was awarded the Marshall Frankel Fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center in 2024. From 2019-2022, Clarke served as the second Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto, and her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Wedge Collection. Clarke holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Toronto, and she received her Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University where she is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the School of Image Arts.

09/02/2026

Our fall programs have launched!

Please join us for the opening of Michele Pearson Clarke's solo presentation "Red and White and Black and Gold" September 12 @ 2pm

On view: Red and White and Black and Gold locates the archive within the emotional and political conditions of displacement. Fifty years after Hasely Crawford won Trinidad and Tobago’s first Olympic gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Games, Michèle Pearson Clarke centres familial archival footage of Crawford’s victory in the men’s 100-metre race as a site of diasporic grief. Drawing upon archival documentation of multiple moments of national achievement and shared experience, the work positions such footage not only as historical document but as an affective site through which collective memory, national belonging, and geographic distance are continually negotiated. Red and White and Black and Gold approaches this tension through an autoethnographic lens, attending to the paradox through which the archival image becomes both a means of participation and a reminder of absence, a vessel through which collective history and personal grief converge. Through repetition, transcribed sound, and sonic performance, the immersive media installation reassembles communal experience through fragments: a race replayed, a national figure recognized, a gesture repeated, a sound remembered, fellowship recorded through public imagery. Crawford’s victory becomes a point of departure for thinking about the ways diasporic feeling is intensified when the histories through which we understand ourselves are geographically, temporally, or culturally out of reach. Returning to these fragments across time, the work asks how recorded moments of national feeling continue to act upon those who encounter them from elsewhere, and how joy, longing, grief, and belonging can come to occupy the same image.

*Artist in attendance

08/26/2026

We’re deeply grateful for the overwhelming support, care, and energy that has surrounded Who We Are and its accompanying programming. From everyone who has visited the exhibition, attended a program, shared the work, brought a friend, or simply helped spread the word, thank you for being part of it. There are just 3 days left to experience Who We Are. 

Looking Ahead: Please mark your calendars for the opening reception and conversation with artist Michele Pearson Clarke. Red White Black and Gold opens on September 12 2026 at 2pm.

08/17/2026