Discover what’s new at Vtape! These works have been acquired for distribution by Vtape within the past six months. New acquisitions can include older works that have recently been brought into distribution.
Image credit: The Invisible Hippo of Grief: An Adoption Story, by Donna Szoke (2026)
2024, 05:20 minutes, colour
tapecode 320.10
Canada forcibly incarcerated and dispossessed thousands of Canadian citizens of Japanese heritage, relocating them to internment camps, or in the case of the Kobayashi family, a sugar beet work farm in the Canadian Prairies. After accessing the 119 page custodial file of her great-grandfather in the National Archives of Canada,… ⊕
The image on the screen shows the artist as she gathers, swaddles, compresses and embraces endless yardage of white fabric.
This is the choreography of a relationship, a choreography of distance and of coming together. Listening to each other’s bodies, mimicry, and following our intuition. The fabric is a manifestation of time, an experience of time folded in on itself. I see cloth as a woven reminder of my place in an expansive sense of time… ⊕
Footage was shot on June 28, 2021, and records the various actions that build to a single performance. The work dialogues with the performance for camera tradition, but it is clearly edited and narratively stylized. There is no direct audience. The main recorded action is me sitting on bags of ice for several hours while they… ⊕
The gesture of my teenage daughter and I washing our hands together enacts a desire for healing. In an effort to reconcile a changing, intimate relationship with my daughter, I reflected on how I unconsciously uphold oppressive structures of power, especially as a parent. How does power and intergenerational pain move through… ⊕
