Bicycle Moon (Blue Light)
Viewing Times:
Monday – Friday, 8 pm – 10 pm
Saturday, 9 am – 11 pm, Sunday, 9 am – 10 pm
Please see the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen screening schedule here.
Julian Yi-Zhong Hou’s Bicycle Moon (Blue Light) weaves together themes of gender performance, Chinese and Western cultural symbolism, and fashion creating a video tapestry that challenges viewers’ sensibilities through a multiplicity of dissonances.
Using the Chinese concept of yin-yang, Bangkok, the drag persona of James Albers, performs an (un)conscious mirroring of selves inviting us to examine our personal relationships with gender and identity. While the video employs a binary framework, Hou nods at the duality of his own Chinese Canadian identity and Albers’s multiracial identity. In doing so, Bicycle Moon (Blue Light) offers a portal through which we can expose, embody, and embrace our multilayered selves and self-projections, queering and rejecting the notion of a singular identity.
Originally titled Bicycle and commissioned as a large-scale vinyl mural as part of the Public Art Program in the City of Markham, Ontario, Bicycle was cancelled just before its debut, highlighting issues around censorship of queer representation in public spaces. This spurred the question: “What is the relationship of queer and marginalized bodies to public space?” By imagining new possibilities for Bicycle to persist despite its cancellation, its adaptation for the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen as a moving image work not only realizes its full potential – bringing the work’s themes to life as a physically enacted performance of gender – but also platforms queer visibility in a space often dominated by consumer advertising. The work’s relocalization to the dynamic Mount Pleasant neighbourhood emphasizes the ongoing need to platform underrepresented artists and to fight against artistic censorship.
Full work credits:
Director: Julian Yi-Zhong Hou
Talent: Bangkok, James Albers, Brendan Connor, Michael Loncaric
Art Directors: Strawberry (Barry Doupé, Dennis Ha)
Stylists: Second Spring Apparel (Julian Yi-Zhong Hou, Addelle McCauley)
Production Assistants: Amy Gottung, Matt Smith, Michael Loncaric
Technical Consultant: Jae Woo Kang
Presented in partnership with grunt gallery, on the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen.
