Headshot of Cody Tolmie. Image Credit: Toonasa Photography.

Elham Puriya Mehr, image courtesy of the curator.

Matilda Aslizadeh’s media installations and photo-based works are characterized by dense visual surfaces and unexpected juxtapositions drawn from a range of photographic, cinematic, and painterly influences. Deeply invested in exploring the critical potential of immersive spectacle, the ambivalent centrality of storytelling in human existence, and the fluid threshold between documentation and fictionalization, Aslizadeh’s work locates political thinking firmly within affective experience. Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and festivals, including exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, AC Institute (New York), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto.

Bei is an emerging interdisciplinary artist whose practice addresses politics of land, cultural memories, and collective identities. Working largely in photographic processes and installations, her research is rooted in critical studies on ‘the image’ and representation. Her work navigates fictional and existing embodiments of land and how land is occupied, manifested and disseminated in our production of place, culture and identity. Currently, she has found fictitious unions between disparate subjects like land, language, affect, and body/bodies constructive in her understanding of self as an inconclusive and often confusing entity. However, it is through an exchange in dialogues—this sifting of what is retained, projected and disposed of that she has found fertile in informing her contemporary conditions.

Natalie Purschwitz is an artist living and working on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people. Her research is propelled by material exploration drawing on modes of making that include collecting, accumulating, arranging, editing, and writing. She is curious about the ways in which the landscape is shaped by humans and nonhumans, through systems of organization, networks of support and ruptures within these systems. By reconfiguring everyday objects, elemental substances and other lively combinations, she attempts to create conditions for material events. Purschwitz has shown her work nationally and internationally at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, BC), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, MB), the Japanese Canadian National Museum (Burnaby, BC), the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleingburg, ON), the Prince Takamato Gallery (Tokyo, Japan) and AGX Galerie (Tehran, Iran).

Rain Cabana-Boucher, is a Michif/British settler interdisciplinary artist raised in treaty 6 territory, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her family has historic ties to the Michif communities of St-François-Xavier, St. Boniface, and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She currently lives and works on the stolen land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xwməθkwəy̓əm Nations. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria. Cabana-Boucher is a recent recipient of the Takao Tanabe prize for emerging British Columbia Painters and the First Peoples Individual Artist grant. Their practice includes the use of mixed media works often using sculpture, drawing, painting, and beading. Cabana-Boucher explores the autobiographical in relation to place and politics; seeking to navigate the complexities of identity within environments that are rapidly changing under systematic pressures.

Miriam is a mixed-media visual artist and landscape designer, living in cə̓snaʔəm (so-called Marpole, Vancouver, BC) with Plains Cree and Irish roots. Miriam’s work explores themes of generational healing, hybrid identity, and land-based epistemologies. Her multidisciplinary approach explores the use of Plains Cree art-forms, using rough construction materials and found objects to express stories of place and experience. Miriam is the daughter of Theresa from Kahkewistahaw First Nation, Jim of Irish ancestry, and the step-daughter of Chris from the Six Nations of the Grand River. In August 2022, Miriam launched her practice “Land-Based Art+Design”. This practice combines both of her passions—art and landscape architecture—to pursue land-based art methodologies and provide decolonized architecture and planning services. She hopes her work will reveal truths, heal wounds caused by colonial violence, and uncover expressions and innovations that defy the colonial paradigm and promote a regenerative future.

Coussonnet is interested in how visual cultures address political, social and spiritual issues in different, or complementary, ways to other disciplines. She has curated exhibitions at Bildmuseet (Sweden), Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati (USA), Le Cube (Morocco) and MeetFactory (Czech Republic).

Lacey Jane Wilburn is a contemporary painter most notable for her cinematic renderings of domestic space that undulate between gesture and realism on canvas. Originally from the Treaty 6 territory of Edmonton, Alberta, Wilburn studied Fine Art at the University of Grant MacEwan in Edmonton in 2009, received her Bachelors of Fine Art from Concordia University in Montreal in 2016 after studying abroad at the l’Ecole d'Enseignement Supérieur d'art de Bordeaux, France, Most recently she obtained her Masters of Fine Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2022. She has participated in over 40 exhibitions since 2009, was the recipient of the University Women’s Club of Vancouver Scholarship in 2022 and 2021, the Yves Gaucher Prize in Studio Arts in 2016, the D. L. Stevenson Colour Scholarship for Academic Excellence in 2014, the Francis Henderson Klingle Scholarship for Fine Art, The Barbara and John Poole Family Endowed Fund for the Arts in 2009, and the Jason Lang Scholarship for Excellence in 2007. In 2010, she formed the urban art duo LALA [Lacey And Layla Art] who have developed over 140 public mural interventions across Canada, France, Honduras, Uganda and Iceland, and have received over $150,000 in grants from federal and municipal funding. Now living in Vancouver, BC on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, Wilburn gratefully dedicates her time to painting, teaching and scuba diving.

Gemma Crowe is a new media artist and recent MFA graduate.

James Harry was born of Squamish Nation and Namgis descent in 1989. James began carving in early childhood with his father, Xwalacktun. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in 2014 and completed an internship in the United Kingdom in 2011 where he learned metal casting and taught Coast Salish sculpture, painting and drawing in Scottish communities. Harry’s diverse portfolio includes cedar carvings, metal carvings, light installations and murals.

Kyla Gilbert is a visual artist based out of Vancouver BC on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She graduated with a BFA in performance from Concordia University in 2017 and spent the two subsequent years touring as a puppeteer with DJ Kid Koala. During her time as a puppeteer, she became interested in the inherent animacy of objects.