Exhibitions
Amniotic Ammonite
Hana Amani
November 19, 2021 - January 5, 2022
Glass Corner at Libby Leshgold Gallery
The shell was built over a few thousand millennia
New molluscs attaching to its growing spiral walls
each new life creating pathways and impressions of what once was, eventually dissolved by fluctuating waves.
Over time, the shell grew, expanding over the shifting sands of the ocean floor.
A kingdom of fossils and ammonites created a fortress of iridescence.
At the heart of the shell, the spirit of an ancient forgotten goddess lay submerged with memories of shipwrecked voyagers and the laments of sirens of the deep. Within her translucent stomach, a fetus grows, slumbering in its amniotic dreams. In her hands, a drowned heart lies, still beating.
Sometimes her whispers are heard from the abandoned conches found between rocks ashore, and old tears trickle out of the spiral pores of the fossils of the kingdom and memories that once were.
Text by Hana Amani
The Libby Leshgold Gallery is pleased to present Amniotic Ammonite, a new exhibition by Hana Amani. This work will be exhibited in the Southwest corner window of the Libby Leshgold Gallery and is viewable from outside.
Hana Amani is a Sri Lankan-born artist, future folklorist, and emerging curator based in Vancouver. She graduated from Emily Carr University of Art+ Design with a BFA in Visual Communication Design and Mixed media. Amani's work focuses primarily on human relations and connections to the ocean through the diverse lenses of mythology, marine life, feminism, and the esoteric. Through her contemplative images and visual poetry, she seeks to build and deepen her own spiritual bonds to the ocean. Living between the Coast Salish Sea and the Indian Ocean, Amani juxtaposes the multiplicity of cultural and historical relationships each body of water possesses, creating links to the people who inhabit these ecosystems.
Recent exhibitions include The Abyss at Equinox Gallery and Predictions at Massy Arts Society. In 2020, she curated We Cast Spells on the Mothers of our Daughters and Daughters of our Mothers, at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Bringing together five women artists of the Asian diaspora, We Cast Spells... explored themes of inherited cultural magic, ritual, and superstition, examining how these beliefs transform through migration.
Amani is currently working on a new project that explores ideas of the feminine unconscious in relation to ancient ocean mythology and the abyss.
Glass Corner is a project that aims to support emerging and diverse art practices and encourages that artists make work directly for the site. The work on display is presented at a physical distance from the viewer and a curatorial distance from the regular programming of the Libby Leshgold Gallery. Openings are held outside in the Southern plaza.
