Workshop

Join Derya Akay, Maria Dyulgerova & granddaughter Biliana Velkova as they explore traditional recipes shared in Bulgarian & Turkish cuisine. We invite participants to join in the preparation and enjoyment of the food while sharing stories and conversation.

The Contemporary Art Gallery welcomes Vancouver-based artist Derya Akay as the Burrard Marina Field House resident this spring. Expanding on recent projects, Akay’s project Manti, Börek, Baklava includes the artist collaborating with women elders from a range of cultural backgrounds to explore and share local and diasporic culinary traditions through a series of workshops and meals. This convivial partaking of food is a gateway to oral history, which Akay understands as both storytelling and the sensations and memories summoned through communal eating.

Biography

Derya Akay (b, 1988, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist living in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include Campbell River Art Gallery, 2017; Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, California, 2017; Painting with Light, Kunstverein Toronto, 2015; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Supper, Centre A, Vancouver, 2014. He received the 2016 Portfolio Prize Emerging Artist Award, Vancouver, and was shortlisted for the 2015 RBC Emerging Artists People’s Choice Award at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2016; Geometry of Knowing Part I, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver, 2015.