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Wednesday 11am - 6pm Thursday 11am - 6pm Friday 11am - 6pm Saturday 11am - 6pm Sunday 1pm - 5pm

CICA Vancouver, 228 Abbott Street, Vancouver, BC (2026)

08/27/2026

What happens when a private voice refuses to stay quiet?

Jazmin Sasky's STOP, children at play! brings together photocopy, acrylic, ink, and the charged presence of a body speaking back.⁠ Sasky's practice follows voice through gender, identity, migration, and belief. Her alter ego, Jazmín, carries autobiographical narratives into images that are direct, vulnerable, and unapologetic. The work is on view in First Light at CICA Vancouver.⁠
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p1.⁠ Dinner is ready!; Gouache paint, photocopies, ink on paper; 24 X 18 in;
p2.⁠ STOP, children at play!; Black and white photocopies, acrylic paint, ink on paper; 17 x 11 in;
p3.⁠Who am I?; Gouache paint, photocopies, ink on paper; 25 x 18 in;
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⁠Jazmín Sasky is a multidisciplinary artist working across sketchbooks, photography, video art, and drawings. Her work explores the formation and transformation of voice through themes of gender, identity, migration, and belief. At the center of her practice is Jazmín, the artist’s alter ego, a constructed presence that carries and performs autobiographical narratives. Accompanied by a Snoopy suitcase, Jazmín first emerges in the artist’s sketchbooks, reinterpreting and giving new form to moments drawn from the artist’s life.

Born and raised in Argentina, the artist immigrated to Canada in 2004. She divides her time between Vancouver and Oaxaca. She holds a degree in Graphic Design and Illustration from the UBA- University of Buenos Aires in 1993. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and she has participated in international mentorship programs that have informed her current conceptual practice. After a long career in design, and painting, Sasky’s recent work has shifted toward autobiographical and conceptual forms centered on works on paper and photo performance. Across all media, Sasky investigates how voice is constructed, challenged, and ultimately reclaimed.
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08/26/2026

Some paintings begin when almost everything else has been removed. David Hovan's Untitled (Rectangle) and Untitled (Two Rectangles) ask us to stay with proportion, surface, light, and the smallest shifts in tone.

The work is intentionally quiet, but never empty. Its restraint makes attention visible: the longer we look, the more the painting gives us to notice. Spend time with both works in First Light at CICA Vancouver.

p.1. Untitled (Two Rectangles); Acrylic on canvas; 36 x 36 in;
p.2. Untitled (Rectangle); Acrylic on canvas; 36 x 36 in;
p.3 - 5. Untitled (Two Rectangles) and Untitled (Rectangle) installation view;

David Hovan is a Canadian contemporary artist and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. His multidisciplinary career has included filmmaking, performance, and visual art, each informed by an interest in perception, memory, reduction, and the essential qualities of experience. Over time, his artistic practice has moved toward increasing simplicity, resulting in minimalist paintings that explore subtle relationships of tone, proportion, and silence. Working primarily with acrylic on canvas, Hovan creates restrained geometric compositions in which slight shifts in value become the central visual event. Rather than seeking spectacle or illusion, his paintings invite sustained attention. Their quiet surfaces reveal gradual differences in light, texture, and spatial balance that unfold over time. The work encourages slower looking, allowing viewers to experience the painting as an encounter rather than an image. His visual practice has been exhibited in commercial and public galleries and has developed alongside an active literary career. His recent publications include books of poetry and reflective prose, where the same economy of means found in his paintings is expressed through language. Across both disciplines, he is interested in what remains after unnecessary elements have been removed. Although rooted in minimalist traditions, his work is less concerned with formal theory than with lived experience. The paintings emerge through careful observation, repeated refinement, and an intuitive search for equilibrium. Hovan continues to live and work in Vancouver, where writing has become his primary creative focus while he maintains a selective visual art practice.

08/25/2026

There are landscapes that stay with us because they carry more than a place. In Yuan Wen's Night of Embers, a layered mixed-media surface holds the tension between a garden, a memory, and something still glowing beneath the image.
Wen's practice moves through nature, cultural memory, and the emotional charge of colour. Night of Embers is on view in First Light at CICA Vancouver, with the online auction continuing through September 2.

p.1. Night of Embers; Mixed Media on Canvas; 28 x 22 inches;
p.2. The Creole Garden; Mixed Mdia; 20 x 16 inches (Sold);
p.3. The Creole Garden (installation view)

Yuan Wen is a Vancouver-based first-generation immigrant artist whose practice combines Xuan paper collage, pigment washes, and fluid abstraction to explore memory, impermanence, and the experience of living between cultures. Drawing on the craft traditions of Southwest China and Buddhist teachings on interdependence, her paintings attend to what forms, dissolves, and endures — using fluidity, chance, and the residue of material processes to hold multiple histories at once.

Wen holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her work has been presented at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Gibsons Public Art Gallery, Hatch Art Gallery and Richmond Art Gallery, among other venues. She is the recipient of the Audain Travel Award, B.C. Binning Memorial Fellowship, Helen Pitt Award, and completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in 2025.

08/25/2026

Garrett Andrew Chong's lens-based work begins with the question of how images can move us from looking to advocacy. Through a climate art practice grounded in ecological awareness, community engagement, and reciprocity, Chong asks us to consider our place within living systems.
In Gratitude, light becomes both image and invitation: to notice what is at risk, to listen to local ecosystems, and to imagine a different relationship with Gaia. See the work in First Light exhibition at CICA Vancouver.

p.1. Peace; Lens-based on Wood; 16 x 24 in;
p.2. Kindness; Lens-based on Wood; 16 x 24 in;
p.3. Gratitude; Lens-based on Wood; 24 x 36 in;

Garrett Andrew Chong is an interdisciplinary climate artist whose practice centres on ecological awareness, community engagement, and the transformative potential of light-based art. A fourth- generation Chinese Canadian and honours graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, he works with lens-based imagery, participatory processes, and digital projection to invite public dialogue about climate change and our relationship with local ecosystems.

Grounded in environmental stewardship and reciprocity with nature, his work highlights the interdependence between human communities and the living world. His recent projection and installation Eroded Origins: Speak For Me! has been presented across Western Canada and received critical media recognition for its immersive approach to climate education, public advocacy, and sensory storytelling.

08/24/2026

A sky can hold more than weather. In Tiffany Blaise's () Cloud Blossoms, light moves through oil, wax, and ink like a changing state of mind. The painting opens onto a coastal atmosphere that feels both familiar and just beyond reach - a place to pause, look closely, and let the landscape become inward. Blaise's Vancouver-based practice follows the emotional charge of clouds, water, and rapid transformation.

p.1. Cloud Blossom; oil, wax and ink on canvas; 40 x 40 x 1.5 in;
p.2.

Tiffany Blaise is a Vancouver-based Canadian contemporary landscape painter of Chinese and French descent whose practice explores the atmospheric and emotive essence of coastal landscapes across the West Coast and beyond. Her mixed-media works evoke a deep connection to place, merging the transient qualities of light, weather, and terrain with a bold, expressionistic approach.
Blaise holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University and her work has been exhibited in cities including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Melbourne, with notable showcases at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and Gibsons Public Art Gallery. Her paintings are held in private and public collections internationally. Her artistic journey has been enriched by residencies such as the Eramboo Artist Environment near Sydney, Australia, and The Pouch Cove Residency in Newfoundland, Canada.
Her mission as an artist is to inspire meaningful connection with the natural world through emotive works that evoke a sense of place and foster reflection, appreciation, and reverence for nature.

08/24/2026

Jasonda Desmond's () Phenomenal Consciousness arrives as a tactile, luminous presence. Working with plant-based plastics, abaca, silk, wool, ink, and pigment, Desmond brings together material, myth, and the living energy of the natural world.

Her practice is guided by visual storytelling and a neurodivergent way of following creative possibility. Here, fibres and pigments become a language for connection between bodies, histories, and the outside world.

p.1. Phenomenal Consciousness; Mixed media (plant-based plastics, abaca, silk, wool, ink, pigment); 25 cm x 12.5 cm x 3 cm;
p.2. Phenomenal Consciousness (detailed view);
p.3. Phenomenal Consciousness (detailed view).

Jasonda Desmond is a self-taught bioplastics and textile artist and illustrator. She identifies as disabled, neurodivergent and q***r. She was born in Texas, USA, immigrated to Canada in 2004, and is currently living in Burnaby, BC (hən̓ q̓ əmin̓əm̓ speaking peoples lands). Always creative as a child, Jasonda began her art practice by creating work in the digital realm as a teenager and eventually founded a surface design studio.

Feeling constrained by the limitlessness of digital art, in 2019 she transitioned her practice to paper and cultivated a vibrant, graphic style of illustrating portraits and florals. In 2022, she started experimenting with textile-based jewelry and developing her own art materials from plant-based plastics. Expanding on this foundation, Jasonda is now focused on creating fine and wearable art pieces made from her proprietary formulas for colourful, lightweight and biodegradable plastics.

08/24/2026

A face appears, then shifts. A figure emerges, then slips back into the surface. Joseph Cunningham's works begin without a fixed image, allowing meaning to gather through layering, removal, and reconstruction. Cunningham's paintings make room for pareidolia - our instinct to find familiar forms in ambiguity. Rather than closing the work with a single narrative, he invites each viewer to participate in its becoming.

p.1. Neverland; Acrylic on canvas; 60 x 48 x 1.5 in;
p.2. Neverland (detailed view);
p.3. Play the Card You've Been Dealt; Acrylic on canvas; 48 x 48 x 1.5 in;
p.4. Cycles; Acrylic on canvas; 60 x 48 x 1.5 in;
p.5. Neverland (installation view).

Joseph Cunningham is a Vancouver-based artist whose practice investigates perception, ambiguity, and the ways meaning emerges through visual experience. Working primarily in large-scale painting, his compositions invite viewers to navigate shifting images that exist between abstraction and recognition, encouraging prolonged observation rather than immediate certainty. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, Cunningham constructs surfaces that reward sustained looking.
Forms gradually reveal themselves through pareidolia—the human tendency to recognize familiar images within ambiguity—allowing each viewer to arrive at a unique experience. His paintings become conversations between artist, material, and observer, where perception itself becomes the subject. In 2026, Cunningham began a formal apprenticeship under Noh mask master Kitazawa Hideta in Tokyo, studying traditional Japanese woodcarving within a lineage-based practice.
Although his apprenticeship centers on carving, it has deepened his understanding of structure, proportion, reduction, and ma—the interval that gives form its presence. These principles increasingly inform his broader artistic practice while remaining distinct from his painting. Cunningham previously presented his solo exhibition Diary of a Rich White Kid in Vancouver and continues to develop work between Canada and Japan.
His long-term practice explores craftsmanship across disciplines while remaining grounded in painting as a means of examining perception, memory, and the human condition.

08/23/2026

What does a child notice that adults have learned to overlook? Jean Huang's works look toward the wonder, humour, intensity, and independent imagination of childhood.
Huang's practice grows from her work as both an oil painter and an early childhood educator, making space for children to appear as complex individuals rather than symbols of innocence. See the work in First Light at CICA Vancouver.

p.1. Important Call; Oil on Linen; 37 x 48 in
p.2. Cabbage Baby; Oil on Linen; 24 x 30 in
p.3. Installation view
p.4. Little Treasure Shallot; Oil on Linen; 30 x 40 in
p.5. Clever Scallion; Oil on Linen; 40 x 60 in
p.6. Installation view

Jean Huang (b. 1985) is an oil painter, and early childhood educator based in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. She received her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Working closely with young children as an early childhood educator, Huang draws inspiration from their imagination, emotional intensity, and unique ways of understanding the world.

Her paintings explore the wonder, humour, tension, and psychological depth that exist within everyday childhood experiences. Combining contemporary subject matter with the techniques of classical oil painting, Huang creates luminous portraits that reveal the hidden logic and emotional complexity of childhood. Her work often transforms ordinary objects into meaningful symbols through a child's perspective, inviting viewers to reconsider familiar experiences with curiosity and attention.

Huang's work has been recognized through exhibitions and awards, including First Place in the 2D category at the 2025 ArtSpacific Juried Exhibition presented by the Langley Arts Council and the People's Choice Award at the 2025 ArtRich Exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery. Her paintings have also been featured through the Vancouver Art Gallery Art Rental & Sales Program. Through her practice, Huang seeks to preserve the imagination, vulnerability, resilience, and quiet power that shape early childhood.

08/22/2026

Specimen #6 by Olivia Robinson () transforms water, mold, and the gradual effects of ecological shifts into a vibrant abstract landscape. Her artwork originates from a deep, lifelong intrigue with water’s gentle disregard for human existence. Water flows seamlessly from the heavens to the ocean, capitalizing on gravity to facilitate its natural cycle amidst the constructed world. It is folly to think human can stop water or mold. They have always been here and will remain long after us.

Robinson uses diluted paint on textured, absorbent surfaces. The remaining paint stains document water movement and provide a ground onto which she can paint and sculpt real and imagined fungi. Through these pieces, she enters into a temporary collaboration with forces that shape life while remaining utterly indifferent to human desires.

p.1. Specimen #6; acrylic on canvas; 6 x 6 in;
p.2. Specimen #6; acrylic on canvas; 6 x 6 in (side view);
p.3. Specimen #5; acrylic on canvas; 6 x 6 in;
p.4. Installation view

Olivia Robinson is an abstract painter and sculptor interested in the forces and cycles that lovingly shape life while remaining completely indifferent to human desires. Her work employs ecological relationships and references water, mold, reproduction, and the cosmos. Robinson grew up in the dense rainforest of Vancouver Island. There, she quickly learned that water was home, but also a headache—an essential yet relentless force. She chases that feeling of home by working with water as a collaborator to stain the textured grounds of her paintings. Now living on Vancouver’s North Shore, Robinson often finds inspiration for her real and imagined fungal forms when looking underneath decaying logs by the stream near her home. She also draws upon her experience with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome for references to the abject and human bodily cycles. Through her richly coloured atmospheric abstractions, Robinson asks what it means to coexist with ecological cycles that exceed human control.

08/22/2026

Water is never only a surface. In Wade for the Same Moon, Sichen Grace Chen () follows the visual patterns and shifting light of waterways, moving between the Pacific Northwest and urban spaces. The painting asks how close observation can change the way we understand our relationship to the natural world. Chen's saturated colour and layered textures make the act of looking feel physical. Wade for the Same Moon is on view in First Light at CICA Vancouver.

p.1. Wade for the Same Moon; oil on canvas; 10 x 10 inches
p.2. Midnight Masquerade; oil on linen; 20 x 16 inches

Sichen Grace Chen is an illustrator/painter, artist-researcher, educator, and a Chinese-Canadian settler on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, also known as Vancouver. In her work, she is passionate about investigating the relationships of the Pacific Northwest through saturated colour and layered textures. In her large-scale paintings, she gesturally translates the experience of walking and bodily cycles with inspiration
from local water bodies. Unlike the typical blue hue, her works explore water through warm palettes, evoking both the body's warmth and the realities of rising temperatures. Through this conceptual and material tension, she invites viewers to immerse themselves in the materiality of traditional art and in the relationship between the body and climate justice.

Chen holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art +Design (ECU). Together with students, she offers a holistic curriculum that combines discovery-based learning and skill-building for all ages. She has received awards from American Illustration (AI-AP), Society of Illustrators (SOI), and Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles (SILA). Her works have been exhibited in galleries throughout British Columbia and across the United States. In addition, she is the co-founder and creative director of Atelier Aloera, a research-oriented climate collective and artist group based in BC.

CICA Vancouver

08/27/2026

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Wednesday	11am - 6pm
Thursday	11am - 6pm
Friday	11am - 6pm
Saturday	11am - 6pm
Sunday	1pm - 5pm