Temporal Dimension
Gloria Han
Yuan Wen
March 19 to April 4, 2026
noon to 5 pm. Tuesday to Saturday
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 22nd
2 to 4 pm.
Drawing from Chinese and Korean craft traditions, Yuan Wen and Gloria Han explore cycles of breath, growth, and decay through handmade processes. Wen’s paper works trace rhythms of repetition and labour, while Han’s ceramic vessels reveal how clay, fire, and time shape ancestral markings and emergent forms.
Gloria Han
Artist Statement
My pulse synchronizes with the flow of the pottery wheel and my mind feels still. I share a breath with my work through the expansion of the space inside of each pot, as though they are extensions of my lungs. Moments of tension and release are frozen after the last firing. I notice the tension and emphasis placed on the fullness of the shoulders of my favourite Korean pots, and I wonder if their makers found moments of peace during the times of violence, colonization, and war.
I study Korean celadon ceramics under Master Potter Jung-Hong Kim and Sylvia Kim. At first, this practice served as a case study to investigate how traditions were abandoned, adapted, or created anew by diasporic peoples. Now, I know that my version of Korean ceramics is not its modernization or reinvention in a Western context, but part of a continued lineage.
Throughout the nine years of studying tradition through a diasporic lens, I was curious about how my material and formal interests would translate to wood and soda firing. The clay that I use for my Korean celadon works is imported from Korea. I was both concerned about the sustainability of my practice, and curious about the materials that my peers were using. The works in this exhibition use my training as a playground, and serve as a point of departure for new forms.
Bio
Gloria Jue-Youn Han is a ceramic artist whose practice is rooted in her training in traditional Korean celadon ceramics. Through this practice, she investigates how traditions are preserved and transformed by diasporic peoples. She earned her BFA from Emily Carr University, MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and continues to train under Master Potter Jung-Hong Kim and Sylvia Kim.
Yuan Wen
Artist Statement
My practice begins with making. By bending bamboo, cutting and dyeing paper, and rubbing ink into surfaces. Bamboo and Xuan paper hold memories — of landscape, labour, and ritual — and I approach them as living systems shaped by touch and time.
Drawing from craft traditions in Southwest China and influenced by ecological thought, I explore how cultural knowledge evolves through migration. Repetition, accumulation, and permeability serve as structural elements in my installations and paintings, indicating that identity and heritage are processes rather than fixed forms.
I create spaces where human and more-than-human forces meet, allowing material, light, and gesture to form temporary constellations. Through these encounters, making becomes a way of sensing interdependence and imagining how we might dwell more mindfully within shared ecological worlds.
Bio
Yuan Wen is a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist working with bamboo, Xuan paper, and mixed media to explore cultural memory, migration, and ecological relationships. Drawing from craft traditions and embodied processes, she creates installations and paintings through slow, attentive engagement with material, body, and environment. Wen holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada.