An Interview

Given that this blog's first post in English had to be something special, I hereby share my recent interview with Hank Bull, director of Centre A.

The Champion of Asian Art.

The sole barrier separating West Hastings Street and the gallery space at Centre A is a long glass wall that can be penetrated through a small door. It feels as if the inside wants to permeate the glass and fuse with the outside. To a person walking along the street, the attraction is inevitable. No lineups, no reception, no ticket counter, no coat check, not a single flight of stairs or even a wall between the newcomer and the art displayed at the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. 

I entered the small door for the first time, together with my friend Christiane, in February 2008 to interview Hank Bull, the director of Centre A. My first impression was that of a person who has just entered a large warehouse or a hangar, and feels uneasy in the large space. As we sat waiting for Hank on a couple of couches that lie in a corner of the gallery, our eyes began to understand the chameleonic properties of the space. The size of the gallery and the height of the ceilings make it suitable for any type of exhibition. 

Hank Bull appeared and after a brief explanation of our mission, we began asking him the questions that we had previously agreed upon. But Hank is not a person that can be easily bound and he immediately escaped the intermittent structure of our script. 

Almost apologetically, Hank began by saying that Centre A exists to break down barriers. His intention is to facilitate the transgression of roles of the traditional museum by expanding the field of cultural intervention. In other words, the art should not stop abruptly behind the doors of the gallery and the artist should not bow to the traditional labour structure that hangs over larger institutions. Artist cum curator cum explorer, Hank envisions a place without hierarchies, where multitasking is the norm, and where the artist and his art are in constant dialogue with the viewer, the bystander, and with the street. 

A decade ago, Hank took a year-long trip to Asia to escape the Paris-New York syndrome and he came back with the dream of creating an art go-to center in Vancouver that truly reflected the ethnic composition of the city. He dreamt of a place for new Asian artists to legitimize their art, but also for established artists to have a platform for interaction with the public. “Art is about people” said Hank, as he explained that by enabling residencies, the gallery becomes a workshop for artists, who develop their art through a constant interaction with the gallery’s visitors. 

The door of the gallery suddenly opened and a homeless resident of East Hastings appeared behind us. She gave us a joyful greeting and Hank introduced her as one of the honorary visitors to Centre A. In an instant, the life of the streets fused with the space of the gallery, marking the absurdity of the outside/inside binary opposition.

“Our location is crucial” continued Hank. The gallery is located at the cultural heart of Vancouver, on the corner that divides Gastown from Chinatown, West from East. The street outside is always vibrant with people walking or pushing shopping carts. Anyone can walk in, the door is always open. This enables Centre A to receive constant feedback from the community it serves and, thus, live up to the director’s vision: to build a pluralistic democracy through art.

I was interested in knowing how Centre A relates to the more traditional Vancouver Art Gallery and Hank explained that partnerships are very common in this city. This led me to ask how Centre A was different and he was quick to deliver the central response in our conversation: the VAG does not reflect the ethnic reality of Vancouver. Even if they cooperate, Centre A’s main drive is to boost the Asian presence in the city in order to fulfill its mission: “push the boundaries of contemporary art that question and complicate the construction of Asian and Asian-Canadian cultural identity.”

Centre A does not settle on a particular construction of “Asian.” It is crucial for the gallery’s survival to maintain an edge of transgression because, as Mr. Bull puts it, “you don’t want to be an agent for liberation and then become an instrument of control.” In this sense, “we don’t tell you what Asian is…we’re here to open the door to exponents of ‘Asian’ without defining it.” After hearing this I began to understand that Hank Bull’s vision includes a constant battle for ideas to redefine the cultural environment of Vancouver. Centre A then becomes not only the setting, but also the moderator and even the debater in this fight.

Hank Bull is on a mission to reinvent the museum and to save the Vancouver Art Scene from the bounds of western paradigms. Lucky for art, he won’t stop until cultural diversity is sufficiently represented in the city.

February 29, 2008