In this lecture, Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw discusses the relationships between local history, psychogeography, and facets of the built environment which feature within his work, research, and routines. Examining contiguous instances of land use, civic architecture, and development, through photographs, sculptures, and installations, Shaw demonstrates his attempts to catalog and narrativize a phenomenology of place. This talk outlines some of the conceptual constraints and curiosities which have helped to guide his decision-making, exemplified through everyday practices of digression and accumulation.

Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw is an artist based between Berlin and amiskwaciwâskahikan / Edmonton, Treaty 6. Combining architectural maquettes, scenic facades, furniture, folly machines, and assorted salvaged materials, Shaw borrows museological techniques to mutually anatomize and fictionalize fragments of daily life. Through a constructed bricolage of urban referents–permutating spatial timelines and memories, he explores the subjective nature of historical recount. Shaw’s work has been exhibited at BPA// Raum, Berlin (2022), Wschód, Warsaw (2021);  KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2021), Union Pacific, London (2020), The Loon, Toronto (2019), Ashley, Berlin (2018), Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York City (2018), and Towards, Toronto (2017).