Vancouver May Never be Poetics Between Montparnasse and Mongkok
Artists: Steven Dragonn
Curator: Xiaoyan Yang
Duration: April 11–June 13, 2026
Opening reception: April 11, Saturday, 2–5pm
Venue: Canton-sardine, 071–268 Keefer St, Vancouver
Gallery hours: Wed–Sat 12–6pm
Steven Dragonn’s images always conceal a delicate tension beneath a surface of restraint. His camera never imposes; his narratives are devoid of spectacle, yet every frame harbors quiet unease. The tones are refined, the gestures modest, but the stillness conceals turbulence. In Vancouver May Never be Poetics Between Montparnasse and Mongkok, the artist situates himself between three cities—Guangzhou, Paris, and Vancouver—each both home and exile. The poetic distance among them transforms into an allegory of migration and memory.
The work begins from the everyday: a CD, a corner of a home, the spine of a book. But within these details, the gaze turns upon itself—a confrontation between sight and reflection, reality and its fiction. Dragonn’s protagonists are himself, his silent family, and the quiet strangers around them, caught in a theater of restrained emotions. His photographs are not mere records; they are the mirrored residues of a life continuously translated across languages and geographies.
Responding to the legacy of the Vancouver School’s conceptualist, this exhibition gathers such fragments into a field of reflection—where the poetic and the prosaic coexist, and where Vancouver becomes not a destination, but a question suspended between the contemporary west and east.
Curated by Xiaoyan Yang, co-founder of Canton-sardine, Steven Dragonn: Vancouver May Never be Poetics Between Montparnasse and Mongkok is part of Capture Photography Festival 2026 Selected Exhibition Programme.
Steven Dragonn, You’re a Drifter, Don’t Dock 你是浪子別拍岸, 2012–2022–2025, transparency in lightbox, foam, 57 x 36 x18 cm.
About the Artist
Steven Dragonn (birth name Suiyang Long, b. 1981) is a visual artist and curator now based in Vancouver, Canada – the ancestral land of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Dragonn holds a BFA at the Sculpture Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art (2001-2005) in China, and a Master degree at the Cinema, Audiovisual, Sound and Digital Art Department of Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France (UPEM – today Université Gustave Eiffel) in France (2006-2009). He served as Assistant Curator (2010-2013) and then Curator of Contemporary Art Sector (2013-2016) in the Memorial Hall of Lingnan School of Paintings in Guangzhou, China, Chief Curator of Kid’s Triennial of Canton, Guangzhou, China (2015), Artistic Director of R Space in Vancouver, Canada (2016-2018), Visiting Lecturer of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art(2014-2020).
In 2018, Dragonn and Xiaoyan Yang co-founded Canton-sardine, an artist-and-curator-driven contemporary art space established in Vancouver, which has since attracted renowned national and international artists/collectives include: Jeff Wall, Marian Penner Bancroft, Image Bank (Michael Morris & Vincent Trasov), Paul Wong, Gu Xiong, Wang Qingsong, Zhang Peili, Polit-Sheer-Form-Office (Song Dong, Hong Hao, Leng Lin, Xiao Yu, Liu Jianhua), Wang Guofeng, Miao Xiaochun, Weng Fen and O Zhang.
Dragonn’s curatorial practice is central to his artistic endeavors, focusing on individual experiences, immigration of minorities, gender minorities, identities, and socio-political struggles. He formed a curatorial collective S² with Steven Tong (Co-founder & Co-director to CSA Space) in 2022, as well as he formed another curatorial collective HaveYouEaten with Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (Former CEO of Sydney Biennale) and Elham Puriya Mehr (Iranian-born Independent Curator) in 2023.
Dragonn’s art practice is beyond Conceptualist and Neo Hyper-real Pictorialist across Communicatics and personal visual experience, with a wide range of forms, includes photography, video, sculpture and new media art such as immersive installation, video installation, and image-sculpture.
He speaks practically in Cantonese, Chinese mandarin, English and French. He became a Canadian citizen in 2021. Since then, he is award winning curator and grants recipient from Canada Council for the Arts & BC Arts Council.
CANTON-SARDINE 