Our public art program has been producing artist-initiated projects since 2009. Artists expand their practice into the public realm by proposing artworks that engage cultural practices and provoke critical dialogue.
These opportunities create public art outside the limits of a predetermined site, theme, or medium, in all parts of the city.
Current artist-initiated projects
Our fourth artist-initiated open call in 2019 invited artists to submit their public art project ideas. A panel of artists, curators, and members of the local First Nations, and Urban Indigenous community reviewed the applications in a 2-stage process.
The Public Art Program is currently supporting the following artists in the creation of their new public artworks.
The artist Zachary George created a Tsleil-Waututh Welcome Pole for šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn, the plaza in front of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
The artwork reflects the rich history of land use in the Robson Street Corridor by the local Nations for the hunting and harvesting of food, and honours the legacy of the artist’s grandfather, the late Chief Dan George.
Zachary George is the grandson of the late Chief Dan and Amy George from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, and late Robert and Betty Edge, who came from England to raise a family in North Vancouver. Zac grew up in North Vancouver and recently moved to Sts’ailes, where he lives with his family, and creates beautiful art pieces in true Salish style. He was covered with the traditional name, Sko-kay-lem, which he carries with pride as it was passed down throughout Tsleil-Waututh history by the late ancestor, Abraham Skokaylem. A descendent of the Wolf Clan, Zac lives a spiritual life rich with tradition and culture. True to his teachings, Zac’s work is infused with good energy, positivity, and strength, as Salish people believe that all things must be done in a good way, with a strong mind and attitude.
Queers’ Vernacular (Slanguage) brings together 2S/LGBTQIA+ artists and members of gender and sexuality support groups to explore how language reflects identity, memory, and belonging.
The project resulted in a community-sourced publication that is multilingual and intergenerational, with contributions from participants aged 18 to 81. Entries span 15 languages, reflecting the cultural diversity of those involved.
Paige Gratland is a visual artist and filmmaker bridging the disciplines of documentary, craft, and print publication. Referencing movements in social history and design, her collaborative approach brings multigenerational artists, makers, performers, and publics together to build, strengthen, and extend cultural communities.
Paul de Guzman’s series of performances titled archipelago: laro na tayo are based on the childhood game “sipa” (kick) played throughout the Philippines. A precursor to hacky sack, the game also predates the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the 16th century, and is played with a shuttlecock-like object made from a "tingga" (metal washer) wrapped in straw, cloth, or both. Guzman’s nomadic and temporary performances will explore the Filipino-Canadian experience, and the complexities of migration, colonization, and multiculturalism.
Artist biography
Born in Manila, the Philippines, where he studied engineering, Vancouver-based artist Paul de Guzman's concept-driven artistic practice is governed by nomadic gestures and transient objects. His artistic strategy is defined as having an acute sensitivity toward an idea, a site, its public and its surroundings, complemented by an interest in fleeting gestures, social structures, urbanism, and post-colonial concerns.
The renowned performance and media artist, Judy Radul, will develop an interactive video installation offering a live feed to the large murder of Northwestern crows (estimated at 6,000) who use the Vancouver greenways and parks to travel daily back to their roost in Still Creek, Burnaby. The installation’s visuals and sound will be activated by the movement of the crows, who act as a sonic timepiece, “going live” according to their own daily migration across the city based on the time of year.
Artist biography
Judy Radul’s latest works incorporate an original computer-controlled system for live and pre-recorded video. Her practice also includes sculpture, photography, writing, and performance.
Recent exhibitions include:
Show Support in the project series “Demonstration Rooms” at Albertinum Museum, Dresden
A solo exhibition at Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2017
Contour Biennale 8, Mechelen, Belgium, 2017
Bienal de Nicaragua, 2016
A solo exhibition at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2015
Berlin Biennale 8, 2014
A solo exhibition at DAAD Galerie, Berlin, 2013
Her large-scale media installation World Rehearsal Court (2009) has been shown in Vancouver, Vienna, Seoul, Oslo, and Moscow.
She has published two books with Sternberg Press Berlin: a book of collected essays and images co-edited with Marit Paasche, A Thousand Eyes: Media Technology, Law and Aesthetics, 2011, and This Is Television, 2018.
Radul received a B.A in Fine and Performing Arts, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 1991, and Master of Visual and Media Arts, Bard College, New York, 2000. She is Professor of Visual Art at SFU School for Contemporary Arts.
Howie Tsui is developing a structure that activates the sonic potential of rainwater through a hexagonal pavilion that concentrates rain onto a seven-foot scholar’s rock. Based on the Pagoda of the Gathering Stars (聚星樓), the only surviving ancient pagoda in Hong Kong, this installation examines the architecture vernacular of Chinatown, and the practice of grafting Chinese aesthetic tropes onto urban spaces in order to project an “Imaginary East.”
Artist biography
Howie Tsui (Tsui Ho Yan / 徐浩恩) was born in Hong Kong and raised in Lagos, Nigeria and Thunder Bay, and currently lives and works in Vancouver. Working in a variety of media—including ink brush, sound sculptures, lenticular lightboxes, and installations—Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that subvert venerated art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati class. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm broadening regimes, and their programs of cultural hegemony. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order, chaos, and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, trauma, surveillance, and otherness through a distinctly outsider lens to advocate for liminal and diasporic experiences.
Artist Jon Sasaki created an “anti-monument” that reflects on the forcible mass confinement and expulsion of Japanese Canadians from Vancouver during the Second World War, and the history of his own family’s internment.
Through community consultation and research into the use of the Pacific National Exhibition buildings and stables at Hastings Park as a detainment site in 1942, Sasaki’s work reflects the impact of internment on the Japanese Canadian community both during and after the war.
