Sena Cleave

Sena Cleave is an artist living in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ peoples, or Vancouver, Canada. Working across a range of media, they address issues of legibility and hybridity in contemporary Japanese Canadian experiences. They pilfer scraps of cultural matter from everyday life (including objects, images and textual passages) and recombine them. The scraps become recontextualized among one another and generate something resembling a whole—one that is jumbled and misbehaving. Cleave holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University. Recent exhibitions include Flavoured Soup, 560 Gallery; New and Emerging, Seymour Art Gallery; I Have Forgotten My Umbrella, Mónica Reyes Gallery; and Digital Interventions Part 2: Mediating Vessels, Massy Arts Society. Together with Debbie Chan, Cleave runs The Couch, a mobile art space consisting of a couch and a coffee table. Recent exhibitions by The Couch include Hometown II, CAG Prize Residency; Just Out of Reach, Unit/Pitt Wrong Wave Festival; and Scent Trails, SFU Galleries’ Audain Gallery as part of BFA Graduating Exhibition 2022: Collecting Plum Blossoms. From April to October 2023, Cleave was the Interim Assistant Curator at CAG.