WHY UNITED AUNTIES?
United Aunties Arts Association is the community and collaborative-focused extension of visual artist Clare Yow's art practice. In 2020, she co-founded Aunties with her husband Leo Yu, in response to a desire to cultivate connections and support local artists and artisans in Vancouver's Chinatown. Read more about our story.
Presently, Clare runs Aunties' day-to-day operations including its communications channels and is artistic lead. Through this initiative, she is able to collaborate with, commission, and amplify the artworks of local artists, particularly racialized and equity-denied individuals. Their creations support a vision of collective resistance and liberation against intersecting forms of oppression.
WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY.
United Aunties is based at BCA Sun Wah in Vancouver’s Chinatown on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied homelands belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). We stand in solidarity with Indigenous people fighting for their land and sovereignty.
Our roots are among the East Asian diaspora and we are inspired by the diverse cultures that prevail in and around Vancouver’s Chinatown. Recognizing the structural racism that exists against Black, Indigenous, and racialized people, and the lateral violence that dwells in our ancestral communities, we are committed to dismantling all forms of oppression and domination. This includes violence against sex workers, drug users, and unhoused people living in the Downtown Eastside.
We support calls to defund the police and dismantle the carceral state, and to build communities upholding the principles of transformative justice. United Aunties will take action in solidarity with liberation movements, including the use of our platform to amplify calls to action. We refuse to be silent and complicit.
As Palestinian writer Rana Barakat says, "solidarity is a political iteration of love." We labour with unequivocal love for the preciousness of life and land and carry this through all that we do.
268 Keefer Street
Vancouver, BC V6A 1X5
Canada
(By appointment only)
email@website.com
000-000-000