Featuring Flavia, Christel Chan, Jane Q Cheng, Minjoo Kim, Chelsea O’Byrne and Rachel Wada, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down takes an inquisitive look at how nostalgia serves as a point of reference for both identity and art. The six local artists explore how memory provides an ongoing context for all of our thoughts and ideas, despite paradoxically being an unreliable source of information. Drawing from their own individual memories, they aim to find vestiges of the past hiding in the darkest corners of the present.

Click here to see photos from the show on Flickr >

Thanks to the Fox Cabaret for hosting our afterparty.

Ever since Flavia could hold a pen, she’s been drawing rainbows, hearts, and cats with spikes. Her kindergarten teacher suggested she attend Emily Carr University of Art & Design. And that’s just what she did. In 2015, Flavia graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design with a major in illustration. Her childhood included a large amount of time vegetating with a gazillion picture books (which were stored in an unplugged fridge) and her beloved television set. The TV and pictures from the pages of children’s book fueled her imagination and continue to inspire her today.

Jane Q Cheng is a Vancouver-based artist. Her interests focus on creating dialogue between illustration and contemporary art practices and finding spaces where the traditional and experimental overlap. Through various topics, she takes advantage of what she sees as illustration’s central yet peripheral standing in contemporary art discourse.

Christel Chan is an illustrator and designer with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (Illustration concentration) from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada. She spent most of her life in Hong Kong but moved to Vancouver to pursue her interest in art and design. In her paintings, she enjoys creating fantastical worlds by mixing the ordinary and the magical.

Rachel Wada is an interdisciplinary illustrator currently based in Vancouver, BC. She is a recent graduate of Emily Carr University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program with a focus in illustration. Her artistic practice involves intricate illustrations executed in a variety of mediums from watercolor, ink, graphite and gouache. She also utilizes digital media and silkscreen printing to produce her 2D illustrations. Her inspirations include traditional Chinese painting, ukiyo-e painting, tattoos and editorial illustration. Rachel has participated in a handful of art exhibitions around Vancouver, and her piece has recently been accepted in the Society of Illustrators: Student Scholarship Competition, where her piece was displayed in the student exhibition in New York.

Minjoo Kim is an illustrator based both in Seoul and Vancouver. In her illustrations, she captures the moments and the feelings that pass us by unnoticed. She believes that the most mundane moments can be the happiest moments in life, once stopped and looked closely into. She wishes to create illustrations and stories that enable the viewers to enjoy that moment and to help them revisit and cherish their own stories that they have missed in their life.