it hides in the light by Dion Smith-Dokkie
The Bows, April 5th - June 22nd, 2024
it hides in the light presents a new body of experimental mixed-media works by artist Dion Smith-Dokkie that attend to embodiment, interface, information, and infrastructure.
Inkjet-printed stills taken from video works, satellite images of bodies of water, images of daily life, and select found images are broken down into ‘particles’. Using water, the particles are transferred onto paper, creating a collage. In this process, the images are liquefied and lose their discernibility: they synthesize and coalesce. The resulting compositions are further developed with watercolor, gouache, and ink.
The result is an indistinct, luminous work that straddles the line between non-representation and concrete location, videographic and painterly modes. The formal and conceptual tools utilized—mediation and translation via contact, transfer, diffusion, and mutation—become tactics of deliberately sensual and nebulous erotic self-representation. They extrapolate a diffused and empathic praxis of embodiment, self-location, and co-relation.
Dion Smith-Dokkie (he, they) resides uninvited on Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh homelands and territories. He was born in Fort St. John and grew up in the Peace River region of northeast BC and northwest Alberta. Dion locates themselves as a gay, mixed-race European-Indigenous man who lives with mental illness. He is a member of West Moberly First Nations, a Treaty 8 First Nation. They hold a BA in Women’s Studies from the University of Victoria (2015), a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University (2019), and an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia (2021).
(Photos belong to me and the description and bio are courtesy The Bows’ website)
