Christian Nicolay and Ya-chu Kang started collaborating in 2010 at the Playwrights Theatre Centre (Candahar Bar Project, Clamour and Toll) in Vancouver, with a sound performance based on morning rituals and habits from Western and Eastern cultures. Nicolay and Kang’s art practice has included sculpture, installation, video, sound recording, performance, and site-specific projects. Their research deals with the shifting polarities between Western and Eastern cultural landscapes, which they define as “portable walls,” a temporary or nomadic shift serving to enclose, divide, protect, or change one’s identity. Issues of memory, process, space, and time revolve around their portable walls explorations and how these constructions become part of their own experiences and spatial relationships.
They received an artist-in-residence program and exhibition at the Taipei Artist Village (TAV) in Taipei, Taiwan (2010), and have exhibited their projects abroad in Finland (Äkkigalleria, 2011), Italy (Sienna Art Institute, 2011; Valcellina Award International Contemporary Textile/Fiber 2012); Japan (Talganie Museum, 2011); Canada (Elliott Louis Gallery, 2012; Maple Ridge Gallery, 2013); Austria (Schmiede Art Festival, 2012), Taiwan (Museum of Medical Humanities, 2012; Songshan Culture and Creative Park, 2012); and Korea (SESIFF: The 5th Seoul International Extreme-Short Image and Film Festival, 2013). Their video Recoil received the Judges’ Award prize from the NW Film Centre (Portland) and screened at the Portland International Film Festival (2012). They look forward to a forthcoming exhibition at the Art Experience Gallery in Hong Kong, Nov–Dec 2013.
