Howie Tsui's Horror Fables documents an ambitious, mixed-media installation by Ottawa artist Howie Tsui, which presented his new, large scroll-like drawings and site-specific wall paintings of ghosts and demons, accompanied by a spectral soundtrack culled from 1960s Japanese horror movies. Tsui's drawings are sprawling, directionless compositions that synthesize a range of subjects in which he finds inspiration, including his family's history, Asian ghost stories, Buddhist hell scrolls, Hong Kong vampire films, neo-conservative propaganda, and twentieth-century genocides such as the Nanking massacre. Questioning ideas of identity and cultural assimilation through the subversive mode of the horror fable, Tsui imagines fabulous landscapes peopled by monsters, demons, and ghosts whose grotesque character is offset by the exquisite refinement of his drawing and painting. Guest writer Emily Falvey's excellent essay explores Tsui's by way of concepts of fear, monstrosity, the grotesque, and hybridity. Catalogue design by Patrick Côté.

Emily Falvey's profile page

Diana Nemiroff is a Canadian curator and art historian in the field of contemporary art. She holds an MA in art history from Concordia University where she was awarded the Alfred E. Pinsky Medal for the highest-ranking graduating student in the Faculty of Fine Arts. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Nemiroff has held positions as director of Carleton University Art Gallery, senior curator at the National Gallery of Canada, and also held assistant and associate curator positions with the Gallery. She has numerous exhibitions to her credit, including the ground-breaking Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada (1992), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (co-curated with Robert Houle and Charlotte Townsend-Gault), which was the National Gallery's first major exhibition featuring the accomplishments of a new generation of Aboriginal artists; Crossings / Traversées (1998), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Melvin Charney and Kzrysztof Wodiczko (1986) for the 42nd Venice Biennale.

Diana Nemiroff's profile page

Sandra Dyck's profile page