Platforms 2020: Public Works

Grey Area 

Paige Gratland’s Grey Area (2020) will be presented on transit shelters throughout the city from November 30 to December 27.

This is a photograph of Gratland’s handwoven “web” created during the early months of the pandemic as a way to process the uncertainty, injustice, grief, and upheaval that continues to mark our daily lives. 

Paige Gratland, Grey Area (2020), 
image of textile

Dear Tree

The drawing and text Dear Tree (2020) by the artist Nick Conbere and poet Fred Wah will also be presented on transit shelters throughout the city from November 30 to December 27.

This collaborative drawing is based on sketches that Conbere created of Vancouver’s surrounding forests to which Wah responded through poetry.

Nick Conbere and Fred Wah, Dear Tree (2020),
drawing and text

COEXIST 

Stills from Mustaali Raj’s digital animation COEXIST (2020) will be shown on digital street signage throughout the city from November 30 to December 27.

In this these digital stills, Raj presents the resilience of circular forms as they morph into familiar and new forms, creating integrated patterns that are ever-changing. 

Mustaali Raj, COEXIST (2020),
​​​​​still from digital animation

Flow Tide 

The video Flow Tide (2020) by Japanese calligraphy artist Kisyuu and dancer Shion Skye Carter will be presented on the VanLive Screen at Granville and Robson from November 30 to December 27.

In this work the artists collaborated for the first time while in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore the relationship between traditional calligraphy and dance.

Kisyuu and Shion Skye Carter, Flow Tide (2020), 
still from video

Isolation 

​​​​​​​The photograph Waiting for a Friend from the series Isolation (2020) by Wade Comer will be presented on a billboard at Broadway and Prince Edward St from December 7 to January 3.

In this photograph Comer uses a long exposure to capture Stanley Park at night revealing details that are often obscured during the daytime, and provides an image of an empty bench that is a fitting analogy for a world in lockdown. 

Wade Comer, Waiting for a Friend from the series Isolation (2020), 
photograph

We Are One 

Tafui’s striking work We Are One (2020) will be presented on a billboard at Helmcken near Granville from December 7 to January 3. Tafui’s practice includes painting, printmaking, wood carving, and textile art, the interconnectedness between these disciplines explored through a restructuring of approaches to minimal mark-making.

The artist explains: “My work is inspired by the idea that ‘we belong to each other’ and through the understanding of our histories and shared experiences we become united, as people, as cultures, and to the earth.”

Tafui, We Are One (2020), 
mixed media on paper

Hybrid Creatures

Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo’s drawing Hybrid Creatures (2020) is shown on a billboard at Broadway and Prince Edward Street (November 9 to December 7).  Hybrid Creatures proposes the importance of personal myth as a guiding metaphor that supports us to reconnect with our lives. Reflecting on our recent times of collective unease and anxiety, this project offers the public the opportunity to explore and re-discover their own story, voice and myth anew in an uncertain world.

Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, Hybrid Creatures (2020), 
drawing

Biogenesis of She

​​​​​​​Sunroop Kaur’s painting Biogenesis of She (2019) is presented on transit shelters throughout the city (November 2 to 29).

This painting is a self-portrait of the artist both nurturing and in turn being sustained by plants in a transitory space between the domestic and outdoors. Kaur’s painting examines the simulations of “real” nature and our primordial desire to both cultivate plants inside our home and be surrounded by nature.

Sunroop Kaur, Biogenesis of She (2019),
painting

Placeholder

Placeholder (2020) by Ryley O’Byrne is a digital and photo collage exhibited on the billboard at Helmcken near Granville (November 9 to December 7).

Since the pandemic O'Byrne has been working on a project documenting touch, intimacy, and loss through text and images. Interested in how the world has had to shift and expand methods of communicating, the artist captures this curious and complicated space where technology and humanity blend.

Ryley O’Byrne, Placeholder (2020),
​​​​​​​digital and photo collage

Talking Trees

​​​​​​​Dejan Radovanovic’s video Talking Trees (2020) is presented on the VanLive screen at Robson and Granville (November 2 to 29). This meditative piece is a digital animation of a miracle forest where trees can communicate with their visitors, helping them to create interpretations, speculations, and meanings. Placing the inner world above external reality this video reveals that there is no better place to contemplate ourselves than in the woods.

Dejan Radovanovic, Talking Trees (2020),
still from video

Harmoniousness Reductions

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Manuel Axel Strain’s photograph Harmoniousness Reductions (2020) are shown on transit shelters throughout the city (November 2 to 29). This work brings greater visibility to the current health crisis that is less talked about: the overdose epidemic, and its disproportionate impact on Indigenous people. The artist describes the work as an image of survival, and testament to their own endurance as having been sober now for over six and a half years and having lost countless others to the disease.

Manuel Axel Strain, Harmoniousness Reductions (2020), 
photograph

Distant

​​​​​​​Gerri York’s photographic series Distant (2007) is presented on 20 digital signs throughout the city (November 2 to 29). This series was shot by the artist as they waited to enter an Antony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, and documents visitors struggling to negotiate their way through the interior of the gallery. These photographs record an installation intended to solicit disorientation, and are looked to now by York as a chilling reminder of social distancing measures and typical encounters that we have in public space today.

Gerri York, Hand 1 from the series Distant (2007), 
photograph

Laurie M Landry's Pandemic Lip Reading

Pandemic Lip Reading (2020) is being presented on a billboard on Helmcken St near Granville St. Growing up, Landry was taught to assimilate and pass as a hearing person by relying on visual cues such as reading lips.

With health measures such as personal protective equipment in place the artist can no longer accommodate the hearing world. This piece shows Landry’s difficulties navigating the pandemic as a Deaf person, and the hope that we can collectively adapt to new ways of communicating that go beyond hearing.

Laurie M Landry, Pandemic Lip Reading (2020), 
painting

Wen Wen Lu's Isolated

Isolated (2020) presented on transit shelters throughout the city are drawings by Wen Wen Lu that the artist began when isolation measures were first introduced.

They became a way of exploring day-to-day changes and documenting thoughts, observations, feelings, or imaginings during the pandemic. Isolated is an expanding visual record, proving heavier as each day passed and more united as the weeks accumulated.

Wen Wen Lu, Isolated (2020),
illustration

Rina Lyshaug's Narratives from the Emptiest Place

Presented on the VanLive! screen at Robson St and Granville St is Rina Lyshaug’s video Narratives from the Emptiest Place (2019). In this piece, Lyshaug reflects on home as a site for the intervention of the imaginary by presenting an image of a room that challenges the physical boundaries of space.

Rina Lyshaug, Narratives from the Emptiest Place (2019),
still from split screen video

Lindsay McIntyre's Dobby and the Rest of us, Distancing

Dobby and the Rest of Us, Distancing (2020) is a collaborative drawing made by Lindsay McIntyre with her seven-year old daughter Alice, and presented on a billboard at Broadway and Prince Edward St.

​

This text-based drawing created during the pandemic presents the artist’s stream of consciousness writing. The figures drawn by her daughter reflect on her own preoccupations with the pandemic and social distancing, as well as the character Dobby from the books Harry Potter.

Lindsay McIntyre, Dobby and the Rest of us, Distancing, (2020),
illustration

Jayce Salloum’s ever close (beyond now)

Jayce Salloum’s series of works ever close (beyond now) (2020) are presented on 20 digital screens throughout the city with messages that the artist sporadically wrote through this time of quarantine. He describes these messages as “sutured manifesto disguised as poetic ramblings and rants out into the void.” Trying to present something resonant and useful, his messages tackle our present point of fear, regression, pain, promise and hope, and the unforeseeable future.

Jayce Salloum, ever close (beyond now) (2020), 
digital image

Chrystal Sparrow's Coast Salish Artist 

Coast Salish Artist (2019), a self-portrait by the Musqueam and Coast Salish artist and carver Chrystal Sparrow, is being presented on twenty transit-shelter posters throughout the city. This is a photograph of the artist adorned in Native American regalia, a reflection on famous 19th century Native American Indian portraits that presented subjects in beadwork, traditional adornments, and fabrics from that time.

Sparrow explains: “I have found that adding these Native American regalia images to my self-portraits has delivered a significant connection to the idea of historical ceremonies practiced by wearing regalia. I also felt a sense of nobility, respect, and inspiration when a chief's regalia covered a part of my body. I also used images of salmon leather, Coast Salish formlines, berries; patterns and textures. My interest to use self-portraits has become a study of traditional art and regalia to be manifested in my work; with the intent to discover more about my Coast Salish, Cree and Shuswap art practices.

Chrystal Sparrow, Coast Salish Artist (2020), 
digital image

Deanne Achong’s Pandemik Piks

​​​​​​​Pandemik Piks (2020), a series of drawings presented on 18 digital screens throughout the city, was originally conceived on Instagram loosely around the idea of hair. Midway through the project, when the deaths of Breonna Taylor and countless others filled the news, the artist’s feed was populated with black squares. In response to these ambiguous squares the artist scanned, altered, and reversed the drawings, creating exploding and flowering hair piks. The series now reflects her thoughts on the world being on fire.

Deanne Achong, Pandemik Piks (2020), 
digital screens

Bagua Artist Association’s Roadside Diary

Roadside Diary (2020) is a digital drawing illustrating daily scenes of the lockdown, presented on transit shelters throughout the city. In this work, an abstracted road weaves together scenes symbolizing how we are all connected despite our physical distance. Composed of four parts--“The New Normal,” “Gratitude and Appreciation,” “The Divided,” and “Animals Out”--the work intends to reflect the impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable groups in Vancouver, as well as occurrences of discrimination and violence in our city, and new practices such as social distancing that change how we operate in our daily lives.

Bagua Artist Association, Roadside Diary (2020),
digital drawing

Randy Lee Cutler’s On the Other Hand

On the Other Hand (2020) will be presented on transit shelters throughout the city. On the Other Hand selected from an extensive collage series, composed of cut-outs from National Geographic magazines, embraces the COVID-19 virus by channelling its RNA code to cast spells through hieroglyphic forms. By bringing disparate elements together into new configurations, a lexicon of human gestures and cultural artifacts is cast open to interpretation, resonating with our shared bodily experiences of uncertainty.

Randy Lee Cutler, On the Other Hand (2020),
collage

Jackie Dives’ photograph Things My Dad Taught Me

Things My Dad Taught Me (2019), presented on a billboard at Broadway and Prince Edward St, is about the death of her father, who passed away from an accidental drug overdose. 

Dives explains, “After he died I would get on my bike and ride to places that reminded me of him. I would stop and make photographs of things that resonated with me as I reflected on our relationship. As I walked through the Vancouver neighbourhoods where I grew up I found myself compelled to photograph things that looked overgrown, neglected, forgotten. But I saw freedom in those things too, a lack of inhibition that my dad had embodied. These photographs allowed me to reconnect with my dad and remember him in his complexity, instead of his faults.”

Jackie Dives, Things My Dad Taught Me (2019),
diptych photographs

Jag Nagra's Frontline Workers ​​​​​​​

Frontline Workers (2020), presented on a billboard at Helmcken near Granville, is a digital drawing based on a warrior character the artist created prior to the pandemic. During the first stages of COVID-19, Nagra re-imagined the warrior as a frontline healthcare worker battling the spread of the virus. ​​​​​​​​​​​​It was a way for the artist to cope with overwhelming anxiety from not knowing what COVID-19 would bring during its early stages.

Jag Nagra, Frontline Workers (2020), 
digital drawing

Nicolas Sassoon’s Tree Houses

Tree Houses (2020), presented on the VanLive! screen at the corner of Granville and Robson streets, are two digital animations of rudimentary tree houses rotating endlessly in various shades of grey. Tree houses can take different meanings depending on the context they are found, from survival shelters to recreational structures. Tree houses represent an important form of escape today through a desire to return to a form of innocence or independence, an escape from reality's contingencies or from an urban environment. 

Nicolas Sassoon, Tree Houses (2020), 
still from digital animation

Sharona Franklin posters

Disability Pride Plaques (Liquid, Earth, Air, Fire) assemblages are created from animal derived gelatin, medicinal plants, foraged wildflowers, and machine made metal hardware. Psychedelic wooden plaques are accompanied by prose destigmatizing and celebrating disabled lives. Medallions and commemorative religious plaques, typically hung on the walls of peoples’ homes are often accompanied by proverbs speaking to hegemonic conceptions of the divine and the exceptional. Disability Pride Plaques transform these preconceptions, resituating the domestic into the public sphere.

These works will be exhibited in transit shelters throughout Vancouver with a special focus on the artist’s Downtown Eastside community. 

Sharona Franklin, Disability Pride Plaque - Liquid, 
2020, photograph, wooden plaque, text, and jelly

Yeonoo Park video

Wanna Go For A Walk?, exhibited on the VanLive! screen at the corner of Granville and Robson streets, is an animation of a personal point of view about a daytime and a nighttime walk. Composed of photographed frames of oil paintings on paper, in this work Park’s frenetic editing style takes on the movements and the gaze of walking filtered through the remembered, imagined, and photographed. 

Yeonoo Park, Wanna Go For a Walk?, 2020, still from video

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes billboard

New Friends, exhibited on a billboard at Broadway and Prince Edward, uses images and decoration that hold cultural cues to reflect on the “visual signs” of the time. Holmes was interested in window signage thanking front line workers, newly adopted dogs, the pressure of the non-stop social media post, and how these signs speak to public issues of love, care, and the political.

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes, New Friends, 2020,
photographic assemblage

Nicole Kelly Westman digital images

reflections of poetic impositions are oscillating visual texts that that take their charge from the collaborative imaginations of their readers. These short poems, “I’d come get you, If you weren’t there, If you’d listen, I’d take you with me” positioned on mirror, reflect back at the reader with a tone particular to the reader’s owned lived experience – opening the text up to being interpreted as soothing sentiment or as maliciously overbearing. Situated in a space dominated by advertising, they might also easily be mistaken for vague advertisements in a world foregrounded by capitalist desire.

Nicole Kelly Westman, reflections of poetic impositions, 2020,
paper, photo gel, and photograph

The July 6 to August 2 program featured Hazel Meyer’s video An Oxford folder holding - The Weight of Inheritance (2020) on the VanLive! screen at the corner of Granville and Robson Streets, Sunny Nestler’s painting Coneworm Floe (2020) on a billboard at Broadway and Prince Edward, and Jack Kenna’s painting Cobwebs Scraped from the Guts of My Summer Vacation (2019) on transit shelters throughout the city.

Hazel Meyer video

An Oxford folder holding - The Weight of Inheritance reflects on the legacy of the late artist Joyce Weiland. The video makes visible Meyer’s own process of artmaking and the possibility that a folder and a work on hold can bring. 

Hazel Meyer, An Oxford folder holding - The Weight of Inheritance, 2020, still from video

Sunny Nestler billboard

Nestler’s billboard is a reproduction of Coneworm Floe, an acrylic painting that the artist produced in March during a residency at the Banff Centre that was evacuated due to the COVID-19 lockdown. 

Sunny Nestler, Coneworm Floe, 2020, reproduction of acrylic paint on wood

Jack Kenna posters

Cobwebs Scraped from the Guts of My Summer Vacation is a reproduction of an oil painting by Kenna presenting an arrangement of objects and oddities that could be found in a domestic living space such as a living room, bedroom, study, or garage. Their presentation elicits a narrative around a fictional person, which takes on new meaning during the pandemic as we reflect on what we choose to surround ourselves in our own homes.

Jack Kenna, Cobwebs Scraped from the Guts of My Summer Vacation, 2019, reproduction of oil, acrylic, spray paint, graphite, and studio debris on canvas

The public art program will feature excerpts from Phoebe Parson’s video Terror Fervor on the VanLive! screen at the corner of Granville and Robson streets, and four images from Birthe Piontek’s photographic series Janus on transit shelters throughout the city. 

Terror Fervor video

Terror Fervor is a hand-drawn cel animation informed by experimental films from the 1960s and 70s, and takes the viewer on a psychedelic non-linear journey through human vice against a visual backdrop of the natural world.

Parson’s piece is a wordless journey that is hard to classify or forget, and was awarded a National Film Board grant for its production.

Birthe Piontek’s photographic series

Piontek’s Janus photographs recall still-life paintings, and were taken in the artist’s home, reflecting on the domestic and limitations of space.

The artist began this series before social distancing restrictions, and current events continue to inform her work, which includes fruits and vegetables interacting with the artist’s body, revealing their kinship in place, time, and the state of change. 

Birthe Piontek, Parsnips, 2020, photograph from the ongoing series Janus

Paige Gratland is a visual artist and filmmaker working in documentary, craft, and print publication. Her conceptual practice disrupts dominant narratives, reworking material culture for queer audiences.

In 2019 she learned to weave at the Richmond Weavers and Spinners Guild, and is currently enrolled in the Master Weaver Program at Olds College. Her woven work is informed by relational colour theory and explores the link between specific colourways and historical memory.

Employing creative strategies to seek out intergenerational community and make connections is a theme that runs through her practice.

Fred Wah is a Vancouver poet who has published numerous books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His work has been awarded the Governor-General’s Award, among others. He is a former Parliamentary Poet Laureate and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

His best-known book is Diamond Grill (1996), a biofiction about a small-town Chinese-Canadian café. He recently collaborated with poet Rita Wong on beholden: a poem as long as the river (2019) and Talonbooks has just published Music at the Heart of Thinking (2020).

Nick Conbere is an artist who presents landscapes based on experiential interpretations of place and investigates the intertwining of natural and human-made environments.

He has exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, International Print Center and Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History, and his illustrations have been featured in the New York Times and other publications.

He works as an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Mustaali Raj is an independent visual artist, art director, and graphic designer whose work lies at an intersection between interdisciplinary concept development and visual communication.

As an engineer turned designer, his creative process is a cohesive blend between left and right brain thinking. He is a circle, living in a square, drawing triangles.

Kisyuu was born and raised in Japan and was given a calligraphy master name “Kisyuu” from her master Kosyuu Kobayashi at the age of 18. She has earned numerous awards, and since moving to Canada in 2007 has been working on her calligraphy installations, workshops, lessons, exhibitions, live performances, and commissioned artworks.

Kisyuu writes both traditional and modern freestyle calligraphy, using the brush and sumi ink to express her true self, and wishing to create both inner and outer peace.

Shion Skye Carter is a Japanese-Canadian dance artist. Through choreography hybridized with calligraphy, video, sculpture, and sound, her work celebrates the discovery of one’s ethnographic identity and connection to heritage.

She is co-founder of the interdisciplinary duo olive theory with musician Stefan Nazarevich, where they experiment at the intersection between embodied performance, installation, and live sound.

Carter has performed across Canada and worked as Artist-in-Residence at What Lab and Left of Main in Vancouver, as well as LEÑA Artist Residency on Galiano Island.

Wade Comer has been a photographer for nearly thirty years. His work investigates two main concepts: how we see, and humanity’s effect on our environment.

The camera is Comer’s primary form of expression. Whether using the camera to create abstract representations of landscape, or to highlight our human existence by documenting what we leave behind, his projects explore the theme of human impact on the environment, the contrasts of urban existence with nature, and the memory of the individual versus the group.

Tafui was born in Jamaica and is a multidisciplinary artist and designer who works in paintings, printmaking, wood carving, and textile art. She received a DEC in Studio Art from Dawson College and a BFA in design from Concordia University.

Tafui is known for her modern, bold black-and-white patterns that adorn her textiles and art prints, and her work can be found in various public art collections such as the Bank of Jamaica and the City of Ottawa. 

Originally from El Salvador, Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in spaces such as the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, the International Print Center in New York, MAI (Montréal Arts interculturels), La Halle Saint Pierre in Paris, and most recently at Marte- Museo de Arte de El Salvador among others.

He is a recipient of the Artist Studio Award Program from the City of Vancouver (2015-2018), a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2010), and numerous others from the Canada Arts Council.

Ryley O’Byrne uses text, image, clothing, ceramics, and film to examine and explore relational dynamics, intimacy, and the process of meaning-making.

She attended the Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles, and was a resident of the Critical Art Writing Ensemble III at the Banff Centre.

Her work has been exhibited internationally and she has texts in or forthcoming in publications including Canadian Art, Room Journal, Public Parking, and The Capilano Review.

Sunroop Kaur completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2019.

Kaur has participated in the Vancouver Mural Festival (2019) and the SPACE Residency at the Shumka Centre (2019).

Her practice examines critical conversations about identity, race, gender, culture, and inherited art histories, and borrows from Western and Eastern iconography to create ethereal spaces, where the duality of her identity may find reconciliation.

Dejan Radovanovic is a Yugoslavian born, Vancouver based media artist working in film, video, animation and sound. 

His work has been screened internationally on exhibitions and festivals such as New York City Independent Film Festival (New York, US), Distant Nature (Knoll Galerie, Vienna, Austria), Creative Tech Week (New York, US), Generative Gallery (Moscow, Russia), MADATAC (Madrid, Spain), and the Psychedelic Film and Music Festival (New York, US), among others.

Dejan spent nine years as Art Director and Production Designer in Film and Television Production before founding his Studio in 2004.

Manuel Axel Strain is a 2-spirit interdisciplinary artist with Musqueam/Simpcw/Syilx heritage.

Although they have attended Emily Carr University of Art + Design they are more appreciative of the knowledge they have gained from their mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and ancestors. Invested with personal and political histories, their practice includes painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and installation, through which mental and spiritual well-being take paramount significance.

They have contributed artwork to Capture Photography Festival, the Vancouver International Airport, and the Musqueam Cultural Centre, and are a guest lecturer at the Vancouver Community College.

Gerri York’s practice focuses on the material, magical and spectral aspects of photography. Her recent work Fold, exploring the nature of camera-less photography, was shown at Malaspina Printmakers' as part of Capture Photography Festival in 2019.

York’s work has been exhibited in a wide variety of exhibitions and juried shows, and is included in both public and private collections in Canada and internationally.

Laurie M Landry attended Wells’ Island Mountain School for the Arts in the late 1970s, and completed the Emily Carr University of Art & Design’s Fine Arts Techniques program in 2008.

She has since continued training with mentor programs and in-class workshops, including Studio Escalier in Paris, France, and Toni Onley Artist Project, Wells, Canada.

Wen Wen Lu is a multimedia artist that works in installation, illustration, and animation. Taking inspiration from family history, she seeks to combine it with experiences of culture, nature and community, creating works that raise questions about those subjects.

Her artworks have been shown in spaces throughout British Columbia, such as Centre A, New Westminster Museum and Gallery, Access Gallery, and Burnaby Art Gallery.

Rina Lyshaug is a Norwegian time-based media artist who practices and lives in Vancouver. She holds a BFA in Film, Video, and Integrated Media from Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Recent exhibitions include The Lind Prize 2020 Exhibition at the Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver, and The Reorganized Organ at Vivo Media Arts Centre, Vancouver.

Lindsay McIntyre is an artist of Inuit and settler Scottish descent, with an MFA from Concordia University. She works primarily in 16mm film and experimental, handmade, and documentary techniques. McIntyre has made over 35 short films that have screened at festivals around the world.

She was awarded the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (Hnatyshyn Foundation 2017), was named the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award recipient for Excellence in Media Arts (Canada Council 2013), and her personal documentary Her Silent Life won Best Experimental Film at imagineNATIVE (2012). She is an Assistant Professor of Film + Screen Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Jayce Salloum is an itinerant geographer of conflicted territories, going only where he is invited or has intrinsic affinity, and creating projects rooted in an intimate engagement with place.

He has exhibited his work at a range of local and international venues from small unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside neighbourhood in Vancouver, to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, Biennale of Sydney, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Chrystal Sparrow is a Musqueam Coast Salish artist and carver who uses unique feminine designs within her work. Sparrow comes from a long line of Coast Salish weavers, artists, and four generations of fishermen. Her late father Irving Sparrow, a master carver, passed down the traditions of carving to Chrystal and her brother Christopher.

She is the first Coast Salish artist to work in the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (MST) Cultural Residency in Stanley Park (2018-2020). Sparrow has also been commissioned by the Vancouver School Board (2018), Starbucks Canada #150 Plus Wishes (2017), and the Vancouver City Hall Council Chamber where she created a seven foot red cedar panel in respect to reconciliation. She believes her responsibility as a Coast Salish artist is to share the living art language through designs, colours, carving techniques, and storytelling for generations to come.

Bagua Artist Association is an artist collective that includes Sean Cao and Katharine Meng-Yuan Yi. Cao holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and Yi holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia. Their collaborative practice focuses on public art, socially engaged art, participatory and interactive performances.

Bagua’s recent projects have included City of Vancouver’s Chinatown Mural Project (2019) and Digital Carnival Media Art Festival (2019).

Deanne Achong works across disciplines, including digital and lens-based projects, installation, and public art. Her practice draws from an examination of history, literature, digital culture, and daily life, exploring concepts of time, narrative, and archival ‘fictions’. In 2018, she established a daily drawing habit that often plays with the boundaries of domesticity and technology.

Deanne's work has been exhibited in Canada, the US, the Caribbean, and Europe. In 2020, she was honoured as one of a group of women who are “pioneers of electronic literature” by ELO.

Jackie Dives explores themes of identity, gender, and mental health in her art practice, which is primarily photography-based. While working as a doula she began photographing women giving birth and this led to her interest in documenting social justice issues through the lens of the female gaze.

Her work has been published internationally, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Intercept. 

Nicolas Sassoon’s work reflects on the tensions between the pixel and the screen, by integrating pixelated figures, moiré patterns, and early computer graphics into experiential displays. Sassoon's work often explores the projective dimensions of screen-based space, and the many relationships between computer technology and the natural world.

His work has been exhibited internationally at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Eye Beam, Vancouver Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Western Front, Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.

Jag Nagra is a queer South Asian artist, passionate about community development and ending the stigma against LGBTQ+ people within the South Asian community.

Nagra has over 14 years of experience as a graphic designer and over 8 years as a professional Illustrator. She is currently serving as Creative Director on the board of Vancouver’s Punjabi Market Regeneration Collective. 

Randy Lee Cutler is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice weaves together themes of collaboration, materiality, science, and fiction. Working with printed matter, collage, video, and performance, she has exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney NIRIN 2020, Belkin Art Gallery and Vancouver Art Gallery among others.

She recently published An Elemental Typology, an artist book exploring the cultural configurations of minerals in philosophy, mining, science, and spirituality. Randy is a Professor at Emily Carr University. 

Sharona Franklin is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and advocate.

Her work explores radical therapies, cybernetic craft, ecological systems, bio-ritualism, pharmacological and social inter-dependency disseminating mythologies of class and biocitizenship within disability. Franklin’s visual media practice can be viewed through social media platforms:

• @paid.technologies 
• @star_seeded
• @hot.crip

Through ontological study and utilizing natural, salvaged, biodegradable, edible, print media, and digital mediums, her psychedelic works invite the viewer into facets of biopharmaceutical investigations and educational community practice.

Yeonoo Park is completing her BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design with a focus in painting.

Her practice involves drawing, writing, and sculpture, all contributing to render the temporality and ambiguity of memory.

Nicole Kelly Westman is an artist of Métis and Icelandic descent that recognizes with indebted gratitude the artists that have come before her and strenuously forged space, the curators that place care at the fore of their labour, the communities that foster confidence in her practice, and the institutions that implement policies prefacing relations of trust.

As an artist, she enjoys practices of listening, watching, hosting, poeticizing, foraging, and sharing.

Westman was previously the Director of Stride Art Gallery in Calgary / Mohkínstsis and is now the Education and Learning Programmer of 221A on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Sel̓íl̓witulh.

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes is a Hong Kong born, Vancouver-based artist who graduated from Emily Carr University with a major in Photography and minor in Curatorial Practices.

Recent exhibitions include Open Heart, Run Off, Sibling Gallery Toronto, and Green Glass Door, Trapp Projects, Vancouver. 

Hazel Meyer works in installation, performance and text to recover the queer aesthetics, politics, and bodies effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics and illness.

Often using scaffolding, banners and hand-painted serif-fonts, alongside a commitment to movement and intimacy, Meyer asks how it is possible to re-centre the importance of desire, queerness and sweat in contemporary political moments. Recent activations of this question have taken place at La Ferme du Buisson (2019), France; Glasgow International Art Biennial (2018), Art Gallery of Windsor (2019); MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) (2019); and at the Porn Film Festival Berlin (2019).

Jack Kenna completed his bachelor of fine arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2019. Kenna’s practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing, and is rooted in a DIY ethos that emphasizes humour and community building.

In 2018, the artist co-founded Ground Floor Art Centre, a gallery and studio created to provide more opportunities for emerging artists to exhibit, curate, perform, and gather in Vancouver. He is a 2019-2020 Artist in Residence with the Vancouver School Board where he facilitates long-term art projects with elementary students.

Sunny Nestler holds an MFA from Emily Carr University, where they currently teach drawing and natural science classes. Their art practice is rooted in drawing and studies mechanisms of biological life using a process that mimics DNA replication and mutation.

Nestler also works in bookmaking, installation, mixed media, performance, and painting. Their subject matter cross-pollinates biological processes, DIY communities, and unusual landscapes with the political affect of relatedness and adaptation.

Nestler has published work as an illustrator and artist’s book maker, and exhibited and performed throughout North America.

Phoebe Parsons studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver where she completed her Bachelor's degree in Fine Art with a focus in film and animation studies.

Parsons’ thesis video work The Fantastic Adventures of Cloudman has been screened internationally at the Vimeo Film Festival, New York, USA, and Anti Design Festival, London, UK in 2010.

The artist also works as an assistant costume designer in film and television, and continues to direct and produce films.

Birthe Piontek received her MFA from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, and is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, in both solo and group shows, and is featured in many private and public collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Museum of Applied Arts in Gera, Germany.

Birthe's project The Idea of North won the Critical Mass Book Award 2009, and her most recent work, Abendlied, received the Edward Burtynsky Grant in 2018.