Artist Statement
I am on Musqueam Land, fibre print, 2009
From a constant need to memorialize the very ordinary and seemingly unremarkable as a young photographer, Clare’s art has since evolved to include a focus on exploring her lived experience as a woman of colour, all the while situating herself on the lands she has called home. These explorations of objects, the body, and place—all contents and containers in the world—help shape the landscape where her subjectivities and personal politics collide.
Through different forms of making, Clare has explored use of complementary mediums including performance, video, installation, sculpture, and writing. Her practice further extends into the gestures of walking and photographing in urban environments — as a flâneuse and female street photographer — roles she has inhabited since adolescence and the early 2000s.
Since finding herself more embedded in Vancouver’s Chinatown after 2015 and moving into a small studio space at BCA Sun Wah in 2018, Clare’s practice has been increasingly inspired and shaped by community and driven by social change and justice. It led to the co-founding of United Aunties Arts Association, an extension of her community-focused art-making in 2020. This work allows her to support and collaborate with other local artists with racialized and equity-seeking backgrounds.