Back
How-to Guide

Gaye Chan

TAKE = act without shame
LEAVE = share without condition
WHATEVAS = trust without apology.

A horizontal photo of Gaye Chan sweeping at a building painted tan and gray, made of poured concrete and bricks. Chan is a human who would normatively be considered middle-aged, gendered 'female' and racialized as 'Asian.' Chan is cleaning up the location of a freestore and a free fridge. Items at the freestore include paint cans, screenprinting screens, a printer, an overhead projector, condiments, a hot pink paper bag, and other unidentifiable items. Chan is turned away from the camera, has blackish shoulder-length hair, wearing a black sleeveless shirt, long brown pants, and boots.
Photo by Jamm Aquino

Gaye Chan

It/Its

Conceptual Artist

Website
Honolulu, HI

Gaye Chan is a conceptual artist who moves between solo and collaborative activities that take place on the web, in publications, streets as well as galleries. Her recent work often ruminates on how cartography and photography simultaneously offer and occlude information. Past exhibition venues include Art in General (New York City), Articule (Montreal), Artspeak (Vancouver), Asia Society (New York City), Gallery 4A (Sydney), Honolulu Museum of Art (Honolulu), SF Camerawork (San Francisco), Southern Exposure (San Francisco), and YYZ Artist Outlet (Toronto).

Chan’s collaborative projects include being a part of Eating in Public, an anti-capitalism project nudging a little space outside of the commodity system. Following the path of pirates and nomads, hunters and gathers, diggers and levelers, they gather at people’s homes, plant free food gardens on private and public land, set up free stores, all without permission.

Gaye Chan was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States in 1969. She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and is a professor of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Chan’s work has been supported by Art Matters and the Creative Capital Foundation.