Flooding: Dana Qaddah and Christian Vistan
Opening Reception: July 10, 6-8pm
Location: Gallery Gachet, 9 W Hastings Street
Exhibition Dates: July 11–September 4, 2026
Featuring artists Dana Qaddah and Christian Vistan
Curated by Gachet curator-in-residence Troy Johnson
Flooding brings together the work of Dana Qaddah and Christian Vistan. Both artists are working with and against images and narratives that circulate in the wake of disaster. Drawing on countervisual strategies, Qaddah and Vistan offer distinct approaches toward a shared goal: disrupting the normalization of environmental fragility and to unfasten its coupling to those in the 'Global South'. Countervisuality, as coined by Nicholas Mirzoeff, is a claim to reciprocity made by those who have historically been subjects of the imperial gaze.
This "right to look" sits in direct opposition to visuality, which refers to the omniscience claimed by those in power (1). It is precisely this concept of visuality—the synthesis of images and ideas and the creation of a perceived knowledge of the other—that provides justification for the control of the subaltern. If images of disaster are how we come to know others, what opinions do we form and what assumptions do we make? Furthermore, if images of disaster are among the most accessible in the historical record, how do those of us in the diaspora relate to them?
Flooding considers disaster media as export, examining the way in which its circulation permits those in the Global North to believe that such forms precarity belong elsewhere. Through sonic, literary, and material practices, Qaddah and Vistan challenge reductive representations of catastrophe, foregrounding the singularity of lived experience and the complex relations that emerge through witnessing. In doing so, Flooding approaches disaster while simultaneously rendering the viewer visible. Furthermore, it asks those of us within the diaspora to examine our longing and consider the ways in which we mine for connection.
[1]Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Duke University Press, 2011.
Christian Vistan is an artist from Morong, Bataan, Philippines living on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Territories, colonially known as Vancouver, British Columbia. In their practice, they gather materials and motifs from personal, familial and migrant histories, assembling hybrid and poetic forms and compositions that intersect, misidentify and relate affect, language and experience. They work across painting, poetry and collaboration, often collaborating with other artists, writers, curators, and their relatives. Recent projects include Canzone, a collaborative exhibition with Tiziana La Melia at Unit 17 in Vancouver in 2026; and Wawa Walk (2013/2025), a photographic installation that was part of Patience, a five month long rotating exhibition curated by Danica Pinteric at joys in Tkaronto, ON in 2025. From 2020-2023, they co-curated dreams comma delta with Aubin Soonhwan Kwon, a room for artist projects and exhibitions that was located inside their family home in Ladner, BC. They hold a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and were a 2024–2025 Fellow at 221A in Vancouver.
Dana Qaddah (b. Beirut, Lebanon) is an interdisciplinary artist and organizer whose work centresthemes of building from, and through, colonial legacies, environmental and economic deterioration, and the condition of being abstracted from the sense of self and place. Qaddah is currently pursuing an mfa at bard college.
Troy Johnson is a curator and art worker based in Vancouver, Canada. She is a curatorial assistant at Libby Leshgold Gallery at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and has previously held positions at West Vancouver Art Museum and Rennie Museum.
