The Contemporary Art Gallery is delighted to host the launch of Diyan Achjadi’s publication Coming Soon!, documenting the artist’s 2018-19 public art project for the City of Vancouver. Coming Soon! was a site-specific interrogation of questions of value, temporality and labour.

Each month for the period of one year, Achjadi produced a series of hand-printed posters and installed them onto the structures surrounding construction sites throughout the city, mirroring the landscapes around new developments themselves. Over the course of that time the posters—hand-drawn and hand-printed through laborious processes of silkscreen, etching, lithography and polymer plate relief—accumulated and, left to the effects of the elements and actions of passersby, decayed, were transformed by graffiti and even removed.

In this live Zoom conversation, Achjadi reflects on the project with City of Vancouver Public Art Planner Tatiana Mellema and CAG Curator Kimberly Phillips.

Copies of Coming Soon! are available for purchase now online here and in the gallery as of June 9. The full-colour, 200-page publication, which features essays by Achjadi and independent writer Zoë Chan, was designed in Vancouver by Victoria Lum. The first 50 purchasers of the book will also receive a special hand-printed poster, an artifact from the project itself.

Coming Soon!is a commission of the City of Vancouver Public Art Program.