ART EXHIBITION + DJ SETS [FREE] @ UNWRITTEN WEEKEND

Local artists XEL, Travis Kirton, Gordy Li, Joy Mullen, and Sarah Nash Wong transform the space with installations, projections, media art, and photography, while Dandelion Records and Sammy K deliver original DJ sets. Come see, hear, and connect.

Presented by Barking Sphinx as part of the Unwritten Weekend festival.
The Hargrove (150 E 3rd Ave, enter through the back alley)
Saturday, March 28 & Sunday, March 29.
Doors & Music: 4:00 pm (duration: 1 hour)
Limited space - please RSVP by clicking on "check availability"

Art will also be on view throughout all festival shows at The Hargrove.

ART BY:
SARAH NASH WONG

Sarah Nash Wong (they/she/he) is a writer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Grounded in the archive of their queer, disabled, and 2nd(ish) generation body, their practice traces lineages of family history, community resistance, movement across land, and slow gestures of care. They make space for the multiple, creating across and between performance, site-specific installation, textiles, writing, and film. sarahwong.ca | @nashswong

JOY MULLEN

Joy Mullen, aka Joy On Drums, has been playing the drum kit for 30 years working as a drummer touring, recording and teaching. She has performed internationally and most recently was invited to perform at the 2025 Juno Awards.

For some time she had been curious about exploring other art mediums. She was drawn to textiles and became interested in using drum materials that were no longer usable and would otherwise be discarded. She began visiting local drummers and asking for their old drum heads, broken sticks, blown out mallets, warped cymbals, and cracked shells.  She enjoys combining elements of drum materials; metal, plastic, wood, cloth, and animal hides with mixed yarns and wools with exploratory colour combinations.

Joy is a white settler currently living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, First Nation’s territories.

TRAVIS KIRTON

Working at the boundary of control and autonomy, Travis is a generative artist exploring how simple computational rules give rise to unexpected complexity. His latest series begins with minimal binary instructions and lets them unfold into dense, emergent structures.

XEL

Hadis Fard aka XEL is an Iranian/Canadian human being from Lur ancestral lineage, based in ancestral land of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Shíshálh nations. She is a sound and vision composer and multi-disciplinary artist. Hadis uses sound, visual art, data, code, and poetry to bridge art x tech x eco and creates multi-sensory & immersive performances and installations. Hadis’ muses and explorations are rooted in eco-feminine, mythology, decolonization, geo-psychology, interspecies dialogue, and collective consciousness. Her works have been recognized locally and internationally, she has performed and exhibited in National Music Centre(Calgary), Mutek.JP x Touchdesigner(Tokyo), Vancouver New Music, Times Square (NYC), etc. Hadis’ purpose and community service is to live by the earth oriented practices within communities and bring the integrated authentic voice in areas less heard, she finds community in diversity.

www.fard.io

GORDY LI

GORDY黎名卓 is a multidisciplinary artist (mostly music tho) from Richmond BC who kept his old phones, iPods and 3DS from high school in the closet instead of throwing them away. I am very inspired by the music that I hear and jam around Vancouver's local scenes so I tend to improvise a lot when I am shooting. Also I went to China 2 months ago, can u tell between the photos I took there and the ones I took in richmond ? FOR FANS OF COMPRESSED CRUSHED JPGS THAT YOU CAN HEAR

DJ SET BY:

DANDELION RECORDS (Saturday, 4pm)

Dandelion Records has been around since 2006. They carry an eclectic selection of records from all genres, times, and places. For the festival, they’ll curate a special DJ set guided by their deep and diverse collection and their taste for musical discovery.
Dandelionrecords.ca @dandelionrecords
SAMMY K (Sunday, 4pm)

Sammy K (Kearse Samuel Werts) is a Vancouver-based DJ/producer and recording arts graduate with a decade in BC’s electronic underground - both on decks and behind the scenes. During COVID, he began exploring R&B, hip-hop, and soulful sounds alongside his electronic roots. Working out of TrebleFive Studios, he shifted focus toward producing and developing emerging talent. In 2021, he launched Northburn Records, a label/collective built to provide opportunity and resources for BIPOC artists in and around Vancouver. With sets at Shambhala Music Festival, Bass Coast, and venues across Vancouver, Sammy K is less defined by genre than by feel - adapting to the room and moving the crowd.

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We acknowledge that our work takes place in Vancouver on traditional and unceded Indigenous land belonging to the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish),Stó:lō and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We are grateful for this place.

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