About the Poet
Xan Shian (MFA, UBC 2021) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work attends to the in-between spaces of personal, cultural and material encounter by seeking what is absent or unaccounted for. She has exhibited art and accompanying texts for spaces including The Vault Gallery (Victoria), Gallery 44 (Toronto), the Polygon Gallery (Vancouver), Pangée Pangée (Montreal), the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (Vancouver) and the Cambridge Art Gallery (Ontario). Through writing, sculpture, photography and video she examines al/chemical relationships between her–human–body and the ocean as a complex and animate body and considers these through folklore and stories that position the shoreline as both a threshold and a place of encounter. Xan Shian is a mother and a second-generation Scottish Canadian who lives, makes and works upon the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, including the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, and respectfully recognises their relationships to and stewardship of the marine ecosystems she connects with in her creative practice.
Website
About the Artist
I began this artwork by meditating on a portion of poem written by Xan Shian. Her words lead me down a deep and dreamy path into the sea, conjuring similar feelings to those I get when I read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. This artwork is created as a vertical piece to reflect this sense of descending into a dark, quiet, reflective place. I used seawater along with ink and gouache—embedding meaning and connection between my materials and subject matter. The words flow and swirl behind the whale, as though they are caught in the current and eddies of her movement.
Natasha van Netten Website
