TRIPLE BURNER FLOWER FIELD

Oxygen Art Centre is delighted to present the exhibition, TRIPLE BURNER FLOWER FIELD by SF Ho, on view from January 15, 2025, to March 8, 2025.

Ho was artist-in-residence at Oxygen through November and December 2024 where they developed new artworks that compose the exhibition and hosted reading group events to explore themes and topics associated with their practice.

An origin point for this body of work is a Chinese pictograph for the word “no”, said to represent a calyx, a root, or a bird flying into the sky. Ho is interested in questioning how the Chinese image of “no” underlies the linguistic, therapeutic, and ecological frameworks that run through Ho’s visual and text-based practices.

TRIPLE BURNER FLOWER FIELD attends to the use of common plants while speaking to first-generation settlers about agriculture and medicine. Ho drew on archival and oral accounts of the role of the barefoot doctor during the Cultural Revolution, the agricultural land defense movement in Hong Kong, and the early Chinese market gardens of Nelson, BC.

By highlighting the spiritual and medicinal uses of four plants: tea, yarrow, poppy and mugwort, the exhibition examines how life is separated into the categories of useful commodities or invasive weeds within the framework of global capitalism.

Using emptiness and manifold duality as guiding principles, art making becomes a kind of serious play that points to interdependence with land and beings while eschewing human supremacy. TRIPLE BURNER FLOWER FIELD includes an installation of ceramics, textiles and scent pieces, as well as a video featuring interviews with Wang Zhao and Ling Yin and an original musical arrangement by the artist.

The exhibition TRIPLE BURNER FLOWER FIELD by SF Ho will be on view at Oxygen Art Centre from January 15, 2025, to March 8, 2025. Free to attend, the centre will be open to the public Wednesdays to Saturdays from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM during exhibition run.

Special thank you to artist Ayesh Kanani for their inclusion of chai cups, to Serena Tang for Mandarin interpretation, and to Xuan Ye for Mandarin translation.

Thank you to the Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, WePress Community Art Space, Tressa Ford and JP Stienne at the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery, MUD Ceramics Studio, Hall Printing, Pauline Butling and Fred Wah, Carol Wallace, Karmelle Spence-Sing, and Greta Hamilton for their support in this project.

Oxygen Art Centre is an artist-run centre located at #3-320 Vernon Street along the alleyway behind Baker Street. 

This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Regional District of Central Kootenay ReDi program.