Rice Brewing Sisters Club (RBSC) is a collective of sisters who works with “social fermentation” as an artistic form. We think of fermentation as not only a biochemical transformation but also an open-ended process that traverses visual art, performance, cooking, creative writing, oral history, ecological thinking, and auntie wisdoms. Also by bringing in the element of “social” in various forms, we experiment with ways to connect the sensorial with the relational. While operating on a yearly membership, we aim to collaborate beyond the boundaries of a collective. This is done by hosting open-ended platforms, where rice eaters from many regions, dwellers of the past, present, and future, and other various human and non-human beings can meet and create synergistic networks.
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Miinju (2018)
Miinju is an ancient rice wine which uses human saliva as a fermentation starter. It was traditionally brewed with saliva of a virginal girl - she would chew rice grains and spit into the container, to be used for ritualistic purposes. Hinging on this story, we adapted the recipe in Ansan - the city with a high percentage of immigrant population - and asked the passersby to chew the cooked rice and spit it out. The rice wine that was eventually brewed out of such rice was served as a welcome drink at the opening of the exhibition Ring Ring Belt (2018, Seoul and Gyeonggi). 

Chew Chew Spit Spit
Residency, Workshops, Tapui Research
Date/Time: August 4, 2019/ 4PM-6PM
Location: HUB: Make Lab, Manila, Philippines
What does it mean to chew something and spit it out? This workshop takes the act of chewing and spitting as a metaphor of actions and cultural practices that involve changes throughout time, (unconscious) transformation, customs of eating and drinking, rituals, and vomiting [!]. Here, the participants create a pool-full mixture of chewed and spit things that are mixed with rice, yeast, selected local fruits, and water. Accompanied by the series of writing and bodily activities, they collectively step on the mixture to squeeze the chunks out and initiate the fermentation process.

A Jeepney Ride
Research, Ride, Workshop, Drinks & Food Sharing

Date: Sunday August 18th, 2019
Departure & Arrival Points:
5PM_Escolta Street [in front of 98B] → 6PM_Makati [Goto Lechon Know]
This workshop starts off by taking jeepney as a metaphor of not only the impressions we have
collected during our month-long stay in Manila but also the ways we work and create together.
Creatively fueled by what we have for what we don’t have, and not always so functional but
somehow functional in the end, jeepney is also a platform for actions and collaboration - that knits closely with our search for imaginative modes of “social fermentation.” The workshop invites a number of collectives, based throughout Manila and Los Banos, into a jeepney that travels through metro Manila. Each collective leads a 15-minute-session which interprets jeepney as a metaphor, while sharing the fermented drink made during the Chew Chew Spit Spit workshop.

​Bau Tanah; Mari Makan!
Residency, Workshop
​Workshop Date: October 15, 2019/ 3PM-5PM
Workshop Site: Jatiwangi Art Factory, Indonesia
Through the residency at Indonesia Contemporary Ceramics Biennale, RBSC hosted a social experiment of soil as an expression and exploration of ecological commoning, understanding, and togetherness. As a way of tracing land’s relationship to culture and life, participants were invited to touch, feel, smell, and partake in the making of various soil composition which responds to the discourse of our surrounding environment, community and the reclamation of our land.

*”Bau Tanah; Mari Makan!” means “food for the soil.”
**The compost recipes were made using the knowledge shared to RBSC by farmers in Kampung Wates: Bpk Diding Junaedi, Maman Sudirman and Kelompok Wanita Tani.

FermentCult
Group Exhibition Ecological Sense (Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin, July 5 - September 22, 2019) 
Workshops: DIY NurukCapsule, Ferment Fiction, Jjal-pickers Social Fermentation LAB 
FermentCult is a project to rethink the fermentation culture in the age of the Anthropocene and imagine fermentation as alternative ways of living and interacting with non-human beings. Fermentation refers to a process through which organic materials change their properties through microbiome of yeast; when interpreted metaphorically, however, it can also denote trials and errors, unpredictability, organic changes, and the slow, porous temporality. Conceived under under the slogan “fermentation is the age-old future,” Fermentcult imagines a scenario in which humans relinquish their dominating presence on Earth and learns to
live with (and within) non-human beings. In addition to the installation, the work includes three
workshops each led by a microbiologist, an ecological novelist, and a media theorist.

click here to see the exhibition catalogue for ecological sense!
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Mushtari Afroz was introduced to Bengali folk dance at a young age in Dhaka, Bangladesh, her hometown. Her training in North Indian Classical Dance form ‘Kathak’ began when she immigrated to Canada in the early 2000. After studying with her first Guru Joanna De Souza in Toronto she started advanced training in Lucknow style of Kathak under the tutelage of Ms. Saveeta Sharma at Upasana – The Spirit of Dance. She also trained in Jaipur style of Kathak under the tutelage of Mr. Hemant Panwar at Panwar Music and Dance School. Funding from Canada Council for the Arts and UK’s Milapfest Foundation helped her pursue training with the living legend of Kathak –Pandit Birju Maharaj– and the leading contemporary Kathak artist -Ms. Aditi Mangaldas- in Liverpool, UK in a workshop setting. Her interest in the recent development of contemporary aesthetics in dance has also motivated her to study with some of the leading choreographers in Canada and abroad. 
In 2016 Mushtari founded Kathak Bandi Dance Collective that aims to celebrate human stories and experience through dance, music and theatre. Since its inception the collective has created original works in collaboration with many Canadian artists and presented them at Night Shift by Citadel + Compagnie Toronto, Dance Matters, HH11 Dance Festival USA, Abhinayam Dance Network, MUSE Arts and Asian Heritage Month Festival to name a few. Inspired by the recent development in the contemporary dance in non-conventional theatre spaces, she has presented her work at Aga Khan Museum’s lobbies and courtyards as part of its Pop-Up Performance and Open Rehearsal series. 
Currently, with a Research and Creation grant from The Canada Council for the Arts Mushtari is working on a new project titled ‘SOM’ that she aims to premiere in 2021.

Normal Shifting
Normality is an illusion just like a mirage. Giving us a sense of comfort for a short while, then it disappears before reappearing in a new form. Transient, unstable and on a continuous journey like a river it shifts our life’s trajectory, contorts our purpose, and throws us into the abyss of whirlpool while renewing us for a new time. This elusive journey has been continuing since the dawn of human civilization. 
The question is ‘is the human species capable of adapting to the continuously shifting normal?’ History suggests that since time immemorial the human mind has risen up time and again in the face of adversity and reshaped its existence whenever new reality became inevitable confirming Theoretical Physicist Dr. Brian Greene’s observation: ‘humans are the special collections of particles within the purposeless universe that have evolved to think, feel and reflect to create purpose.’ 
COVID-19 is now our reality and in the future, the slow-burning crisis of climate change will take that place. Are we, as artists, resilient enough to turn these dark ruptures in life into inspirations to courageously re-imagine creativity that will stand the test of uncertain times to give hope to the future of quintessentially human art forms? 
This project was born in response to the absurd existential conditions that mankind all over the globe has been experiencing since the beginning of the lock-down and was developed in collaboration with Imran Noor Mohammed (Theatre Artist, Canada), Tanveer Alam Shawjeeb (Music Composer, Canada & Bangladesh), Dewan Karim (Home Camera for Mushtari, Canada) and Booster Rocket Media (Video Direction and Editing) while respecting the social distancing policy of the province of Ontario. 
Link to Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P0uJl2iFaM&feature=youtu.be

10 minute excerpt:
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwIvjKTl194&feature=youtu.be

Jenny Lin is a Taiwanese-Canadian visual artist based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, who works with experimental narrative, primarily in the form of print-based installations, artists’ books and zines. She is drawn to the socio-political, accessible and community-based aspects of print and zine-making, self-publishing and distribution, and uses drawing and text as a way to process life experiences and connect with the world around her. Some of her zine projects have included web, video and AR components, feeding into an interest in moving and transforming images, interactivity and wide-reaching platforms. She works together with Eloisa Aquino as B&D Press, a queer micropress project. Together, they have created collaborative zines as well as print-based installations, and facilitate zine-making workshops with a focus on queer, feminist content and QTBIPOC communities.

These are selections from an ongoing series of drawings and text that document my experience and observations during the current coronavirus pandemic. I began the series as a way to record some of the strangeness of the circumstances, and as a way to create some structure to my day, something that I could share with friends online. I would make a drawing or series of drawings based on something I had seen, read or heard about, and post it on Instagram with a text description. This selection focuses on anti-Asian racism related to the pandemic.

Born in Brasília (Brazil) and based in Montreal (Canada), Tatyani Quintanilha is known for her dark soft pastel drawings which depict her inner view of social human relations, especially regarding human bodies and values. Since childhood she is interested in the figurative, especially the human figure and its fantastic or symbolic representations. Her adolescence was marked by chronic kidney disease and several periods of social withdrawal for health care, which remain to this day, and where drawing plays an essential role. She graduated in Fine Arts and has a postgraduate in Analytical Psychology.

Her work is disturbing, causes fear in some people and reflection in others. Dry pastel, charcoal and pencils on large-
format crumpled paper refer to raw and primitive, where we can find expressionism and existentialism. The work themes habitually refer to ways of social power, diseases and human existence. As a Latin American woman, she draws political events, portraits and self-portraits, and personal narratives dealing with health problems and question medical
and political power. She participated in exhibitions in Brazil, and her main influences are Francisco Goya, Leonora Carrington, Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Antoni Tàpies and René Magritte.

She just started a new life after receiving a kidney transplant in 2019 and recently moved to Montreal where she constantly
works on new dark drawings.

L’architecture du Chaos is a series of drawings created during the pandemic. All drawings were made of soft/dry pastels on paper board, crumpled or not. These drawings are my personal response to the circumstances presented by the COVID-19, where the historic social injustice showed its cruel face. 
My work has always been connected to issues involving health and power. We are all susceptible to the virus, but the socio-political and cultural system chooses who to care for and who to protect. 
Unfortunately, the real right to health care and chances of survival is directly proportional to pre-existing conditions such as origins, skin color, social class and integration. Most of those who actually died and will die because of the pandemic are the same oppressed people as ever, the poor, the BIPOC, the segregated, the "useless", the elderly and the sick. 
The architecture on which human relations are based is archaic and racist. The pandemic is evidencing our structural flaws, and the need to rethink and change. 

ESTEBAN PÉREZ (b. 1992 in Quito, Ecuador), received his bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Arts in 2018 from Universidad San Francisco de Quito, EC, and is currently an MFA Candidate at Emily Carr University of Arts + Design in Vancouver, BC. In 2017 he was selected for the Premio Brasil –Arte Emergente (CAC), an award funded by the Brazilian embassy for the promotion of Emerging Artist. His work has been part of exhibitions such as: ‘Triplete’ (No lugar, 2018), ‘dissipare’ (Khora, 2018), and Premio Brasil (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, 2017). His latest solo show Transitory (Más Arte, 2019), explored the overstimulation and saturation generated by the massive consumption of information.
 
Earth Project, 2019-ongoing 

Link for Video of Earth Project: https://vimeo.com/384156722
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I propose a simple gesture. To dig a hole in the earth, put the earth in a box and send it to Ecuador, my motherland. As simple and absurd as this may sound, the process reveals some interesting dynamics between the entangled ideas of land, trade, territory, art and law. The project originated from feelings of anger and frustration when entering a new country, in this case Canada, and requesting yet another visa.
 
I was interested in the effects of nations and borders, and their restrictive methods for regulating human movement. The designation of a “First World” Country is rooted in a colonial matrix of racialized violence. Particularly interesting are the inherited hierarchies that continue to haunt our daily lived experiences, for instance, why does the settler get to decide who enters its land. Another example could be to see land as a commodity, that needs to be exploited for the benefit of the Nation’s development. At the beginning of this project, I was trying to find out why a person with an Ecuadorian passport cannot freely travel throughout the world. In comparison to a person from a First World nation who holds a “stronger” passport that allows them to travel without any restrictions. My intention with this project was to temporarily change roles. And see what would happen when a person from the southern hemisphere approaches the First World nation territory with an extractive gaze. I wanted to extract the land of opportunities. Now, I understand that I was trying to decolonize the earth. Coming from a developing country and therefore acutely aware of the complex meaning of borders, I recognized that I needed to ask for permission from the first habitants of these lands, the Musquem, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. That feeling of frustration shifted toward a sense of deference and respect. After a small Squamish protocol of asking permission to the earth and Nature, Aaron Nelson-Moody, a squamish artist and I, proceeded with the earth collection. This leads me to the next step of the project. The documentation of the bureaucratic process of sending a box of earth (territory) to Ecuador.

Excerpt from “Asian futures, without Asians” (2020)
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From an ongoing research project and illustrated lecture analyzing how white Western sci-fi filmmakers depict futures inflected by Asian culture but devoid of actual Asian people. With coronavirus fears manifesting in irrational anti-Asian racism and conspiracy theories, this selection of images highlights how an old, xenophobic trope has persisted over two centuries.
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In futures depicted by white filmmakers, street vendors with hanging food are presented as weird, gross, and savage.
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“Rat eating” is a pernicious and enduring urban legend assigned to Chinese immigrants to North America since at least the mid-1800s, broadened to now include other Asian ethnicities and immigrants. This trope is intended to paint Asian people as filthy, diseased, and uncivilized. Rather than, say, the rats themselves, a lack of access to health care and public services, or not wearing a face mask during the current pandemic, regardless of your race.
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Images:
1) Screengrab of a street vendor selling deep fried rats in the Neo Seoul area of “Cloud Atlas” (2012).
2) Screengrab of hanging roasted animals in “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” (2017).
3) Screengrab of a white hero realizing the burger he is eating is made from rats in “Demolition Man” (1993).
4) Advertisement for Rough On Rats brand rat poison (c. 1900). This image is used on many novelty products for sale in 2020.

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Piece Description: In my Skin

Oil painting on canvas
36” x 48”

With the advancement and growing popularity of social media, like many people, I found myself exposed to more and more accounts of hate and violence. As we watched the outbreak of Covid-19 spread to western countries, we also witnessed a rise in Anti-Asian rhetoric which trickled down from those in positions of power, to the everyday person’s news intake.Seeing the rise in hate crimes towards people of the Asian community was both heartbreaking and eye-opening. Growing up in Toronto, I was extremely privileged to live in a culturally diverse community. I was never made uncomfortable because of the colour of my skin, and never had to conceal my heritage. I was lucky to grow up in a country that prided itself in diversity and acceptance. 

Unfortunately, this pandemic has uncovered the ugly racism that exists in our country, no matter how diverse or accepting, we as a country like to believe we are. On certain days, I contemplated the irony, the fact that our skin, the largest organ in our bodies, which serves to weatherproof, protect, insulate us, became the target for disapproving glances, racial slurs, and even physical attacks. The mixture of self-consciousness, vulnerability, fear, anger, and pain became familiar emotions that lingered in the back of my mind. The quiet reflections and discourses with friends and family, inspired this faceless self-portrait showing a body with multiple hands trying its best to comfort itself. The different hands express a spectrum of emotions, from anger, shame, to protectiveness. Without associating these human emotions to a face, I hope the painting can speak to a more universal crowd, who can perhaps find comfort in knowing that they are not alone in this fight.
 
Piece Description: Thank You Have a Nice Day

Oil on Paper
9"x 12"​

Growing up Chinese Canadian in Toronto, the "thank you, have a nice day" plastic bag was an iconic symbol associated with Chinatown and the Asian community.
This graphic serves as the motif for a new series which recognizes the hardships conquered, and celebrates the talents and contributions of individuals across the Asian diaspora, who are breaking boundaries and (re)defining Asian representation across different sectors. As part of an ongoing series, so far I have painted Takashi Murakami and Bruce Lee, and hope to paint more role models from the Asian community in the future.

Florence Yee is a Cantonese-struggling visual artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Their interest in Cantonese-Canadian history has informed an art practice examining diasporic subjectivities through the lens of gender, racialization, queerness and language. Notable exhibitions include Sino(n)-Québécoise? at Centre Never Apart and Le Salon at Articule, as well as exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2020), the Gardiner Museum (2019), Centre A (2019), A Space (2019), Art Mûr (2018), and the Karsh-Masson Gallery (2017). Along with Mattia Zylak, Yee co-founded The Institute of Institutional CritiqueTM in 2019. They are currently the Co-Director of Tea Base, a grassroots collective in Tkaronto’s Chinatown run by queer East and Southeast- Asians. They obtained a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from OCAD U. They are represented by Studio Sixty-Six. to edit.
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My practice started with the research of historical references to Cantonese-Canadian history and has now moved into a more intimate, more self-doubtful examination of diasporic family respectability from a queer lens. I use textile installation to question the stoicism of assimilationist imperatives, by holding space for personal & intergenerational failure and cultural loss. As an expansion upon (and critique of) liberal multiculturalism, it seeks to deromanticize Cantonese diasporic experiences and destabilize linear narratives of the self through humour and an autotheoretical approach. It problematizes labour as the longing for—and futility of—work within Cantonese diaspora, impacted by tradition, family, and queerness. 
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The banner made specifically for the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) was hung inside the gallery during their All Hours event. As a recognition of the AGO’s physical site in the neighbourhood of Chinatown (as well as on stolen land), I collaborated with Tea Base, a local arts collective, to knock on neighbours’ doors to invite them to our mahjong hall. The donated proceeds from the night were redistributed to Giditem checkpoint land defenders who were struggling against a pipeline expansion. 

My most recent ongoing series, Please Help Yourself, is a collection of glazed ceramics meant to resemble tangerine peels. The offering of tangerines is reminiscent of the ways that Cantonese people often welcome guests in their home, and the simple food that is shared among friends on the side of the curb. As ceramic works, the inconspicuous leftovers of our shared gatherings become small monuments to those moments. As an expansion upon this project, I have transformed it into a collaborative endeavour. During COVID-19, I have mailed a small portion of clay to relatives and friends whom I cannot visit, for us to “share a tangerine,” by making one and sending it back to me to fire in a kiln. The sculptures act as commemorative objects of loss, while also grieving this time through creative acts. 

1. Whitewashed, vinyl on plastic bag, 2018. 
2. A Labour of Labour, hand embroidery on found comforter, 7’ x10’, 2019 
3. THE AGO IS IN CHINATOWN; CHINATOWN IS ON STOLEN LAND, latex paint on canvas, 6’ x 20’, 2020. 
4. Please Help Yourself, ceramic, dimensions variable, 2020- (collaboration with Arezu Salamzadeh)

     5. Please Help Yourself, detail ​

Through annotations this Instagrammable work through personal archive poke light jabs on the subject of Asians being seen as a foil to privilege and a scapegoat for identity politics: somewhat of a buffer to gatekeep class/race disparity and an “acceptable” output for triggered anger toward the perfect subaltern. As we are humble and nice we nod and smile...​

There’s always the component of the lived experience vs the myth of meritocracy. In which there’s constant validation of this idea of the subaltern in the rhizome of society. Who, if they (the subaltern) work hard enough and are being an outstanding productive member of their society, can rise above their station. Without discounting anyone's lived experience or qualitative information at hand... the problem is that it (the notion of meritocracy) is still deeply embedded in the notion of shame in line with normalizing instances of micro-aggressions toward minorities. How great do you have to become in this equation of inequity to have the same worth as the privilege to receive basic reciprocity?  The myth of meritocracy extends and maintains itself through niceness and humbleness which both participate in conserving a sense of stagnation and status quo in racial disparities due to systemic and institutionalized bias.