Lan “Florence” Yee, for the cracks, steel wire and silk, variable dimensions, 80 pieces, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

LAN “FLORENCE” YEE | DO WEEDS STILL GROW IN HEAVEN?
UPPER GALLERY
6 JULY 2024 - 28 SEPTEMBER 2024

Asking if weeds might still appear in Heaven, Lan “Florence” Yee complicates survivorship as an afterlife. Through a new installation of photographic textiles, paintings, and sculptures installed within custom lumber-framed walls, Lan links the sprouting of weeds with the emergence of abuse between queer intimate partners. This mistreatment often goes overlooked in the struggle for queer acceptance, imbued with pop culture allusions to utopia, as in the sapphic anthem of Belinda Carlisle’s hit song “Heaven is a Place on Earth”.

Entering the exhibition, visitors are met with a series of wood-framed walls that impede vision and turn the space into a domestic labyrinth. Within these walls, small sculptures of weeds sprout around the edges of Lan’s printed photographs of architectural dividers of glass bricks and curtains. These partitions straddle domestic and public space, utilized for their ability to allow light in while also maintaining privacy. These barriers embody a contradiction, they shed light into domestic space while also maintaining its privacy, permitting the conditions for weeds to grow.

Moving further into the exhibition, the hanging photographs become more intimate, depicting a couple in bed together or a domestic interior with a lamp. On many of these photos, the artist has hand embroidered short texts or “PROOF” watermarks. The word “PROOF” patterned across some of Lan’s photos questions the legibility of photographs and of archival documentation in general. These “proofs” might be unfinished works in progress. Conversely, the photo might be labelled as evidential proof of an action or occurrence. In cases of intimate partner violence, evidence of acts or incidents are often difficult to obtain, relying on the politics of believability. 

Proof also documents a presence that might otherwise be forgotten. In researching the holdings of the Quebec Gay Archives, Lan was surprised by the intimacy of its holdings which included candid photos of couples from decades past. Recordings and proof have an uneasy relationship between the ability to create a new queer archival presence with the past harms of queer exclusion from official records. Evidence and documentation can only capture so much. Archives can be limiting and Lan continues to imagine ways to hold memory in ways that are unrecordable, ephemeral, and momentary.

Curated by Adam Whitford, Associate Curator & Exhibitions Manager

Lan “Florence” Yee is a visual artist and cultural worker based in Tkaronto/Toronto & Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. They collect text in underappreciated places and ferment it until it is too suspicious to ignore. Lan’s work has been exhibited at the Textile Museum of Canada (2023-24), Darling Foundry (2022), the Toronto Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), and the Gardiner Museum (2019), among others. They obtained a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from OCAD U as a Joseph-Armand Bombardier SSHRC scholar. They are a recipient of the William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists (2023). Lan is a member of JIA Foundation as curator of the Chinatown House MTL. 

Lan’s artwork is represented by Zalucky Contemporary.

We acknowledge the support of the City of Lethbridge, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. The artist would also like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.