SUSTAINING APERTURE: DAYLIGHT
Project Type: Exhibition
Location: Or Gallery, Vancouver
Artists: Divine Ndemeye, Colin Mbugua
Curator: Jenn Jackson
Year: 2023-2024
Project description: Sustaining Apertures was the first public viewing of Daylight (2024), an immersive pavilion composed of a central aperture that beams light onto a constellation of plantings amid a system of sustenance. The continual flow of water within the pavilion references the transformative power of Skwachàys, where Or Gallery is currently located, as a place where salt marshes and freshwater springs once abundantly flowed. Daylight (2024) honours ancestral relations to sustenance alongside the protocols necessary to support healthy ecosystems and powerful connections for many generations to come.
Together Ndemeye and Mbugua recognize that the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ people and territories are timeless. The artists’ social and architectural explorations pay honour and respect to how vast relations have shaped the many publics that have emerged out of the history of this place—specifically, the rich and culturally diverse local community in the area immediately surrounding the Or Gallery in Chinatown, Hogan’s Alley, Strathcona, the Downtown East Side, False Creek Flats, and adjacent neighbourhoods.
Acknowledgement: Xwalacktun Rick Harry for an inclusive celebratory welcome. Lauren Brevner and James Nexw’Kalus-Xwalacktun Harry for their collaboration and dialogue on Indigenous representation and land-based gestures in contemporary art
Publication designers: Kirsten May and Anthea Lee | Photographers: Dani Castello, Gloria Wong, Connor Davies | Exhibition documentation: Blaine Campbell | Ceramic fabrication and co-design: Nolan Talbot Kelly | Exhibition design and installation: Alixzandar Morle | Creative preparators: Agnes Fan and Vincent Isabel | Editorial support: Lucien Durey | Research support: Roger Collins at Rise Up Marketplace.