2026 Season
Johnny (Tiger) Tai — *Zodiac Crossroads* — Artist Statement
My work begins where vision ends. As a blind and partially deaf artist, I create art not to be looked at, but to be engaged with — felt, explored, and experienced through touch. Raised etchings are my language: sculpted surfaces on metal that speak through fingertips, telling stories of identity, culture, myth, and belonging. In a world where art is often defined by sight, I choose texture as my primary medium — an inclusive gesture that invites everyone, regardless of ability, into the experience of creation.
This tactile approach is not only personal, but pioneering. While raised surfaces have existed in limited forms, the way I construct them into cohesive, expressive visual narratives is new. Each line, ridge, and contour functions like a word in a sentence, forming symbols and compositions that can be *read* with the hands. My work bridges the divide between visual art and tactile communication, offering a creative grammar accessible to non-visual learners and opening doors for blind and visually impaired artists to engage with visual storytelling on their own terms.
*Zodiac Crossroads* grew from this desire for universal accessibility. Rooted in both the Chinese zodiac and Western astrological traditions, these tactile works weave ancient cosmologies into textured maps of human experience — joy, conflict, transformation, and identity. By re-imagining these archetypes through touch, I create a space where cultural symbolism and intuitive exploration meet, allowing audiences of all abilities to experience layered meaning beyond sight alone.
My practice is guided by the belief that creativity should never be limited by sensory modality. Tactile art holds powerful potential as a **fantastic teaching tool**, especially for young blind artists in schools. Imagine a learning environment where students can physically explore line, form, texture, and composition; where tactile etchings become foundational lessons in artistic language. This work represents a step toward that future — dismantling barriers, expanding artistic literacy, and nurturing creative confidence in learners historically excluded from mainstream art education.
Every piece I create is a statement- of resilience, connection, and possibility. Art should not be a passive spectacle; it should be a conversation held through the senses. My tactile etchings are invitations — to pause, to explore, and to imagine how art can exist in a more inclusive world, where touch becomes vision and texture becomes voice.
My work begins where vision ends. As a blind and partially deaf artist, I create art not to be looked at, but to be engaged with — felt, explored, and experienced through touch. Raised etchings are my language: sculpted surfaces on metal that speak through fingertips, telling stories of identity, culture, myth, and belonging. In a world where art is often defined by sight, I choose texture as my primary medium — an inclusive gesture that invites everyone, regardless of ability, into the experience of creation.
This tactile approach is not only personal, but pioneering. While raised surfaces have existed in limited forms, the way I construct them into cohesive, expressive visual narratives is new. Each line, ridge, and contour functions like a word in a sentence, forming symbols and compositions that can be *read* with the hands. My work bridges the divide between visual art and tactile communication, offering a creative grammar accessible to non-visual learners and opening doors for blind and visually impaired artists to engage with visual storytelling on their own terms.
*Zodiac Crossroads* grew from this desire for universal accessibility. Rooted in both the Chinese zodiac and Western astrological traditions, these tactile works weave ancient cosmologies into textured maps of human experience — joy, conflict, transformation, and identity. By re-imagining these archetypes through touch, I create a space where cultural symbolism and intuitive exploration meet, allowing audiences of all abilities to experience layered meaning beyond sight alone.
My practice is guided by the belief that creativity should never be limited by sensory modality. Tactile art holds powerful potential as a **fantastic teaching tool**, especially for young blind artists in schools. Imagine a learning environment where students can physically explore line, form, texture, and composition; where tactile etchings become foundational lessons in artistic language. This work represents a step toward that future — dismantling barriers, expanding artistic literacy, and nurturing creative confidence in learners historically excluded from mainstream art education.
Every piece I create is a statement- of resilience, connection, and possibility. Art should not be a passive spectacle; it should be a conversation held through the senses. My tactile etchings are invitations — to pause, to explore, and to imagine how art can exist in a more inclusive world, where touch becomes vision and texture becomes voice.
Johnny Tai - Artist Bio
Johnny (Tiger) Tai is a visionary Canadian artist, martial-arts instructor, and accessibility advocate whose work transcends conventional boundaries of perception and experience. Born in Taiwan and based in Richmond, British Columbia, Tai is totally blind and partially deaf, yet he approaches art — and life — with an intensity of touch, intuition, and rich sensory imagination that defies expectation. Drawing on his lived experience, Tai creates tactile etchings that invite audiences to *feel* art as deeply as they *see* it.
At the heart of Tai’s practice is his signature raised etching technique: intricately textured, two-dimensional compositions on aluminum that are as compelling under fingertips as they are under eyes. His work channels myth, culture, and personal narrative into forms that connect across sensory and cultural divides, honouring the full range of how humans experience art.
*Zodiac Crossroads* — Tai’s landmark solo exhibition — reimagines the signs of the Chinese zodiac alongside Western astrological symbols, drawing on ancient mythologies and contemporary cultural threads alike. This constellation of 22 tactile works explores identity, heritage, belonging, and intercultural dialogue through a sensuous language of line, texture, and touch. Originally presented at the **Richmond Art Gallery Annex in 2025**, the series now embarks on a new chapter here at the beautiful Harrison location, engaging local audiences with its accessible, interwoven cosmos of symbols and stories.
Tai’s art practice has been recognized through exhibitions at renowned spaces including the Grunt Gallery (Vancouver), the Italian Cultural Centre, and the Outlet Gallery, and his work continues to challenge and expand understandings of visual art and accessibility.
In 2025, Tai also participated in the **NaAC Canada–Korea art exchange**, a pivotal cultural initiative that brought Canadian artists with disabilities together with Korean peers for collaborative exhibitions, dialogues, and public programming — underscoring his commitment to artistic diplomacy and global connection.
Beyond his artistic achievements, Tai is the founder of **Night Strike Self Defense for the Blind**, a non-profit initiative that empowers blind and visually impaired people through martial arts training, situational awareness practice, and physical confidence building. Proceeds from his Tiger Tactile artworks support this work, embodying his belief in art and movement as tools of empowerment and community care.
Tai’s multi-layered practice — whether through sensory art, cultural engagement, or physical mastery — invites us to reconsider what it means to *perceive*, *connect*, and *belong*. Through *Zodiac Crossroads*, he offers a tactile universe where ancient stories and modern voice meet, opening space for wonder, empathy, and shared experience beyond sight alone.
Johnny (Tiger) Tai is a visionary Canadian artist, martial-arts instructor, and accessibility advocate whose work transcends conventional boundaries of perception and experience. Born in Taiwan and based in Richmond, British Columbia, Tai is totally blind and partially deaf, yet he approaches art — and life — with an intensity of touch, intuition, and rich sensory imagination that defies expectation. Drawing on his lived experience, Tai creates tactile etchings that invite audiences to *feel* art as deeply as they *see* it.
At the heart of Tai’s practice is his signature raised etching technique: intricately textured, two-dimensional compositions on aluminum that are as compelling under fingertips as they are under eyes. His work channels myth, culture, and personal narrative into forms that connect across sensory and cultural divides, honouring the full range of how humans experience art.
*Zodiac Crossroads* — Tai’s landmark solo exhibition — reimagines the signs of the Chinese zodiac alongside Western astrological symbols, drawing on ancient mythologies and contemporary cultural threads alike. This constellation of 22 tactile works explores identity, heritage, belonging, and intercultural dialogue through a sensuous language of line, texture, and touch. Originally presented at the **Richmond Art Gallery Annex in 2025**, the series now embarks on a new chapter here at the beautiful Harrison location, engaging local audiences with its accessible, interwoven cosmos of symbols and stories.
Tai’s art practice has been recognized through exhibitions at renowned spaces including the Grunt Gallery (Vancouver), the Italian Cultural Centre, and the Outlet Gallery, and his work continues to challenge and expand understandings of visual art and accessibility.
In 2025, Tai also participated in the **NaAC Canada–Korea art exchange**, a pivotal cultural initiative that brought Canadian artists with disabilities together with Korean peers for collaborative exhibitions, dialogues, and public programming — underscoring his commitment to artistic diplomacy and global connection.
Beyond his artistic achievements, Tai is the founder of **Night Strike Self Defense for the Blind**, a non-profit initiative that empowers blind and visually impaired people through martial arts training, situational awareness practice, and physical confidence building. Proceeds from his Tiger Tactile artworks support this work, embodying his belief in art and movement as tools of empowerment and community care.
Tai’s multi-layered practice — whether through sensory art, cultural engagement, or physical mastery — invites us to reconsider what it means to *perceive*, *connect*, and *belong*. Through *Zodiac Crossroads*, he offers a tactile universe where ancient stories and modern voice meet, opening space for wonder, empathy, and shared experience beyond sight alone.
Sidi Chen: Story-Lines | 线性叙事
February 28 - April 6
Opening Reception Sunday March 1, 2 -4 pm
Sidi Chen explores the relationships between bodies in various states and dimensions, including human, ecological, and planetary. Through their practice, they interrogate the principles to mediate, negotiate, and re-orient such relations through movements that inspire empathy across different bodies. To research such a multifaceted enquiry, they engage an interdisciplinary process bridging arts, natural science, and social development, as well as their own queer diaspora journey across the globe, to understand how to ground the constantly shifting identities, politics, and narratives of the diverse bodies that their practice touches. Therefore, in the exhibition, “Story-Lines | 线性叙事”, they reflect on their diasporic journey, whether it is the immigration processes or the site-specific research trips, to interrogate the linear methodologies through poetic interventions.
(Paddling down the Yukon River, YT, during the Canadian Wildness Artist Residency. photo credit: Geneviève Paré)
Artist Bio
Sidi Chen is a traveling queer artist whose practice addresses the intersectionality of the body, community space, and the land. For the creative process, Chen empathizes the body as a unit of measurement, a vessel of relationships, a repository of experience, and an instrument for creativity. Through his interdisciplinary research crossing arts to science and social movements, Chen's interested in how the embodied experience informs the relations and agencies of the bodies that are human, ecological, and planetary.
Chen graduated from the University of the Fraser Valley with BFA with the honor of distinction in 2018 and is a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts Program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (September 2021). Chen has participated in a wide range of residencies, exhibitions, performances, and projects in North America. Sidi Chen is currently working as a practicing artist, an independent arts administrator, and a community worker in the historical Chinatown, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, known as Vancouver, BC.
Chen graduated from the University of the Fraser Valley with BFA with the honor of distinction in 2018 and is a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts Program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (September 2021). Chen has participated in a wide range of residencies, exhibitions, performances, and projects in North America. Sidi Chen is currently working as a practicing artist, an independent arts administrator, and a community worker in the historical Chinatown, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, known as Vancouver, BC.
