[Updated 15 December 2019: For those who might have missed our launch/exhibition, here is the photo album.]
The Hong Kong Studies Initiative invites you to this special two-part “City in Protest” event to mark the public presentation of “After the Protest: A Vancouver Archive of the Umbrella Movement.”
Join our interviewees and artist Tammy Flynn Seybold for some personal reflections on the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and its implications/lessons for the current crisis in Hong Kong.
Archive Launch
Saturday, 30 November 2019, 2:00–4:00 pm
After the Protest: A Vancouver Archive of the Umbrella Movement
120, C. K. Choi Building, UBC
1855 West Mall, Vancouver
Free and open to the public
RSVP
The 79-day Umbrella Movement of 2014—which in many ways foreshadowed the current struggles of Hong Kong—was a watershed moment in the history of the city. Not only has the protest movement transformed the political and social dynamics of this former British colony, it has also deeply affected overseas Hong Kong/Chinese communities. Our goal for this project is to create a publicly accessible oral history archive, both as a means to learn about the impacts of the Umbrella Movement in general but also as a way to better understand the Hong Kong community in Vancouver in particular.
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Exhibition
Saturday, 30 November 2019, 1:00–5:00 pm
The Hong Kong Umbrella Movement – An Artistic Diary
Tammy Flynn Seybold
Lobby, C. K. Choi Building, UBC
1855 West Mall, Vancouver
Free and open to the public (registration not required for the exhibition)
During the 2014 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, many creatives put forth their art to document and support the movement. Near the “Lennon Wall” in Admiralty, sculpture, paintings, video art installations and more grew organically into a large and inclusive exhibition of protest art. Tammy Flynn Seybold was an artist living and working in Hong Kong during this time, and she began creating a documentary artwork for each day the streets were occupied. Her artwork was informed by the local media reports and her photography, taken at the Central, Admiralty and Wan Chai protest sites. Copies of the paintings and illustrations hung at the Admiralty protest site, but the originals travelled with Flynn Seybold when she moved to Vancouver in 2015. These are being exhibited for the first time, alongside the more recent work of UBC student Aaron Tong, whose piece also addresses this critical time in the history of Hong Kong.
Since her undergraduate studies of Art, History of Art, and Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, Tammy Flynn Seybold (and her work) has been influenced by her belief in the power of art to inspire and influence change. Her graduate work at Queen’s University, where she received her Masters in Art Conservation, cemented her conviction to preserve cultural works and heritage. The paintings, illustrations, and photography she created in the autumn of 2014 were an effort to document, highlight, and propagate the truth of what was occurring in the streets of Hong Kong during this critical time. Flynn Seybold’s artwork has been exhibited in Toronto, Hong Kong, and Vancouver. Her latest exhibition, “Of Time and Tides,” recently held at the Silk Purse Art Centre in West Vancouver, documented what is gifted to us by the Pacific Ocean, both in Hong Kong and here in Vancouver.
This special two-part event is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative and is generously supported by: Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster, Department of Asian Studies, Department of History, Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, Asian Canadian Asian Migration Program, and Centre for Chinese Research.
Registration for “After the Protest: A Vancouver Archive of the Umbrella Movement”
Registration for this event is now closed. To find out if it is still possible to attend, please contact: hksi.ubc@ubc.ca.