To turn down the noise of daily life, Fei Disbrow seeks out-of-the-way places where she can find small, unusual organisms. It is in these places where she observes and records unfamiliar, miniature lifeforms which are integral to this body of Disbrow’s work. Her research focuses on cryptogams, resilient and ancient organisms that cover 30% of earth’s soil surface and play a foundational role in ecosystems around the globe. Found in the Arctic, the desert, forests and cities, they are global extremophiles thriving in hostile habitats, capable of surviving death-like desiccation. This exhibition explores the rich, often-overlooked world of cryptogams—mosses, lichens, and algae—through Disbrow’s sculptural work.

Using a camera as a drawing tool, Disbrow captures these organisms without disturbing them. The images are printed directly onto metal, then cut out, using outlines that are intuitively determined. Sculpted to defy traditional format, the pieces are either gently bent to echo the subjects’ undulating topographies or mounted onto monochrome panels to form photographic relief collages. By isolating these remarkable lifeforms and shifting their scale, each piece – presented not just as a biological subject but as a visual wonder – becomes a quiet contemplation.

Growing from the 2023 Gallery exhibition Invisible Fish, and inspired by the Joy Harjo poem “Remember,” remember the earth, remember the sky is a group show focusing on ancestral connections through land, air, and memory as experienced and understood by early career artists connected to this territory and in conversation with works from the Gallery’s permanent collection by Salish artists.

Using an array of mediums, including painting, digital art, sound, sculptural installation, ceramic, and natural materials, the artists reflect on themes connected to place and environment, family history and ceremonies, migration and diasporic identities, and spirituality. This exhibition also includes hands-on experiences with art, including a visitor invitation where one can contribute to an interactive sculpture, weekly piñata breaking referencing its history of celebration and ritual, a collaborative playlist where visitors can dedicate a song to their ancestors, and more.

“remember the earth, remember the sky is partially inspired by my work with children with the Gallery’s school program Sharing Perspectives: Indigenous Contemporary Art Workshop,” says Alanna Edwards, Curator of Art & Education Initiatives. “Children are full of joy, curiosity, and wonder and are open to new ideas. I hope all who visit, no matter their age, can come and ground themselves by remembering their ancestors, their connection to place, and their journey.”

We’re thrilled to welcome artist Gloria Estefanell to Whistler Contemporary Gallery for a special one-night event filled with creativity, energy, and artistic discovery.

Gloria will be joining us in person for an intimate evening where guests can explore her newest works, learn about her process, and experience a live performance featuring one of her sculptural pieces — a captivating extension of her iconic skier paintings.

What to Expect

✨ Meet & Greet
Connect with Gloria in a relaxed, welcoming setting. Say hello, chat about her inspirations, and experience her warmth and creativity firsthand.

🎨 Live Demo & Performance
Gloria will create a painted wall element to accompany one of her sculptural skiers — a rare opportunity to watch her transform space through movement, colour, and texture. This performance reflects the same energy and falling-paint aesthetic seen in her paintings.

🎥 Behind-the-Scenes Stories
Gloria will share insights into her studio practice, including time-lapse videos and recent commissions, offering a deeper look into how she builds her dynamic compositions.

🍷 Drinks & Good Company
Enjoy a selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages as you mingle with other collectors and art lovers.

🖼 Sneak Peek at New Work
Gloria is sending new pieces ahead of her visit – a wonderful chance to view fresh works before they officially debut.

A Night of Creativity & Community

This will be a fun, casual, and inspiring evening – the perfect winter gathering for collectors, guests, and anyone curious about Gloria’s magical world of colour, motion, and contemporary performance art.

Join us on January 31st from 4:00–6:00 PM at the Hilton Gallery.
We can’t wait to welcome you for an unforgettable event with Gloria Estefanell.

RSVP link coming soon!

Heather Woolley, an environmental designer and artist, finds inspiration in the West Coast’s landscapes. Her work fosters a dialogue between humanity and nature, emphasizing sustainability and community engagement.

Central to Heather’s practice is her passion project on rammed earth, where she explores the intersection of material technique, construction art, and sustainability. Through this endeavor, Heather aims to create enduring structures that harmonize with the environment while advocating for responsible building practices. Her goal is to inspire stewardship and sustainability in her viewers, promoting a deeper connection with the natural world.

Since 2011, Choi has been creating traditional Korean folk paintings, drawing inspiration from centuries-old techniques while also infusing them with her own creative expression. She primarily works with Oriental watercolour, Mica Powder, and Hanji—a traditional Korean paper handmade from mulberry trees. She occasionally incorporates other traditional materials, such as Bunchae—a traditional Korean powdered pigment made by mixing finely ground natural or mineral pigments with animal glue— and Bongchae— a premium pigment made by mixing powdered pigments with animal glue and hardening the mixture into solid stick form.

The works featured in this exhibition reflect both homage and innovation. While rooted in the forms and motifs of traditional Korean folk painting, Choi’s works are not mere reproductions. Instead, she reinterprets and transforms these traditions, creating original pieces that embody both reverence and personal vision. Her goal is to highlight the enduring beauty and emotional depth of Korean folk art while bringing a fresh perspective that resonates with contemporary audiences.

Choi is particularly drawn to natural themes—peonies, birds, and other elements of the natural world—which are rich symbols in Korean culture.

Each piece is created through a meticulous process that may take up to six months, involving multiple stages: sketching, outlining, and layering of colours. Through this careful craftsmanship, Choi seeks to preserve the traditional while also exploring her own evolving artistic language.

Choi began her artistic journey in community art classes, initially painting as a hobby. Over time, her dedication and talent led her to participate in various competitions and exhibitions.

The You Are Here exhibit presents the original artwork selected for the 2026 You Are Here Fundraising Calendar. Artists submit artworks of places that are recognizably in North Vancouver or West Vancouver. The 2026 You Are Here Calendar features Mount Seymour, Lonsdale Quay, Whytecliff Park, Seaview Trail, Horseshoe Bay, Grand Boulevard, Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve Gazebo, Lighthouse Park, Spirt Trail, Deep Cove and The Shipyards. This calendar is a fundraiser for the North Shore Culture Compass, a free online map featuring arts, heritage, and stories of the North Shore.

Edge Effects features a combination of new commissioned works and projects never before seen by audiences in Canada, such as Liz Magor’s still poignant Blue Students/Alumnos en azul (1997). Originally commissioned by INSITE97, the public project centred on photographic portraits of students from the School of Creative and Performing Arts in San Diego, California, and the Preparatoria Federal Lázaro Cárdenas in Tijuana, Mexico, that were placed throughout both cities. The film negatives were pressed with paper covered in iron salts, which converted into positive blue images as they were exposed to sunlight. By the end of the installation period, only a few portraits had not been completely obscured, with the artist stating that the legibility of the images represented the power of circumstance and chance that governs people’s lives.

Photo credit: Jin-me Yoon, video still from As the Crane Flies Bunker (Sonic Transformations), 2025. 4K and thermal 3-channel video installation with sound, sandbags, netting, and wood. 15:05 minutes, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.

Phantom Scripts revisits three works by Geoffrey Farmer from the Audain Art Museum’s Permanent Collection — Vampire Archive, November 22, 1974 (2010 – 2025), The Politics of Appearing (2012 – 2025), The Good Sweeper (2017 – 2025)— reframing them through newly composed scripts, annotations, and didactic texts authored by the artist. The texts function as interjections — speculative, contextual, poetic — that reexamine and complicate the earlier works. In doing so, Farmer explores how art can be returned to, re-read, and re-situated under shifting historical and ethical awarenesses.

This exhibition is a return — not only to Farmer’s past works, and to the evolving conditions in which they are understood. Phantom Scripts highlights the artist’s curiosity to revisit the assumptions, forms, and the silences embedded in his earlier productions, treating the past not as fixed, but as an unsettled field of interpretation and implication. Early aesthetic elements remain — vivid, disorienting, alive — but are now considered by the artist within a broader awareness of colonial entanglements and queer disidentification, foregrounding the role of the museum not as neutral host, but as a site of complicity, memory, and potential transformation.

Kintsugi, the Japanese art of “golden joinery,” is a 500-year-old tradition of repairing broken ceramics with natural Urushi lacquer and powdered gold. Rather than disguising damage, it highlights it—honoring imperfection and the passage of time.

Vancouver-based artist Naoko Fukumaru draws on this ancient practice as both a craft and a meditative process. Through her work, she offers a powerful metaphor for personal healing: like broken pottery, our cracks can become part of our story—transformed, illuminated, and made beautiful.

Respecting traditional materials and methods, Fukumaru also pushes the boundaries of kintsugi through instinctive, innovative techniques. Her approach redefines what restoration can mean—bridging history and emotion in work that is both raw and radiant.

This exhibition invites viewers to reflect on what it means to be beautifully broken—and to find strength and beauty in the imperfect.

This exhibition explores one of the most intense and productive chapters in the professional life of American photographer Lee Miller. Between 1932 and 1945 Miller was simultaneously a renowned portrait photographer running her own studio in New York (1932—1934), a photographer for perfume and cosmetic brands in advertising (1932—1945), and a fashion photographer and war correspondent for the British edition of Vogue (1939—1945). This short time span encompasses a rich history in which the photographer moved between and linked her various practices. Miller’s diverse professional activities, and the ease with which she stepped from one context to another, reveal a photographer whose work was defined primarily by its exchange and commercial value. Lee Miller: A Photographer at Work reveals the inner dynamics of managing a photography career amid the myriad challenges facing professional women at the time. The exhibition offers a rich and complex portrait of this important figure, previously known best for her collaboration with American artist Man Ray and her close ties to the Surrealist movement of the 1920s.

Within The Mould, Against the Grain establishes itself as a case study on the genealogies and emergence of Black culture from within the Continent ( Africa) and across the diaspora.

Utilizing Deforrest Brown Jr’s seminal text (Assembling A Black Counter-Culture) and Stuart Halls’s assertions on Black popular culture and identity as conceptual points of departure, this exhibition investigates the similarities, differences and connections that exist between instances of Black cultural production that have emerged from the Western Black diaspora as well as the Continent. Though united under the shared identity marker of “Black”, each one holds nuance based on separate histories, traditions, material conditions and varying stakes.

Through an intimate coalescing of lens-based works, schematics and sonic installations works, exhibiting artists Tati Au Miel, Odartey Aryee, Deforrest Brown jr, and Isabel Okoro expand on existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks that consider Black artists as knowledge keepers and producers, insisting that Black cultural identity, like Black cultural production, is a robust and complex process of both becoming and being that is ongoing.

Exploring themes like traditional spirituality, embodied knowledge, the limits of representation, global Black identity, and the tensions between appropriation, commercialization, and Black cultural production, this exhibition exemplifies the politics of style and oppositionality that position Black cultural production as existing against the grain, despite the hegemonic forces that attempt to dilute and subvert its potential.

The exhibition brings together artists Mike McNeeley, Chuck Melnychuk, and Sandrine Umuhoza in collaboration with WePress Community Arts Space. Their works reflect on lived experiences and social conditions of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—narratives that also hold relevance with communities in Surrey.

Aligned with WePress’ commitment to working with those most impacted by systemic injustice, What Bodies Know grew from community workshops centering immunocompromised and disabled participants. These workshops focused on expressions of collective care, with McNeeley, Melnychuk, and Umuhoza contributing as peer workers. In these roles, they offered guidance, shared knowledge, and helped cultivate a supportive space grounded in accessibility.

Developed alongside the exhibition, descriptive and extend labels will provide visual details of the artworks, creating an inclusive experience that supports deeper engagement and understanding. Altogether, What Bodies Know reflects a collaborative and creative process, highlighting how art can serve as a tool for community connection and transformative dialogue.

An extended presentation of the Audain Art Museum’s Permanent Collection, From Sea to Sky celebrates the collection’s evolution from its inception in 2016 to the present. Built on the generous donation of over 200 works by Founders Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa, the AAM’s Acquisition Committee has since guided the holding’s expansion through purchase, commission, and donation, to almost 300 outstanding pieces representing the art of British Columbia. Carving, painting, and photography serve as the pillars of the collection, featuring notable works by artists active from the mid-nineteenth to early twenty-first century. Such a display offers a unique visual evocation of the cultural differences that continue to shape BC’s socio-political identity.

From Sea to Sky showcases familiar masterpieces alongside newly acquired and previously archived works of art. These pieces by artists from the province, and those inspired by local environs, are all housed in Patricia and John Patkau’s stunning example of contemporary West Coast architecture. Among the active carvers and photographers of note are Robert Davidson, Dempsey Bob, Jeff Wall, Jin-Me Yoon and Stan Douglas, while paintings by Emily Carr, AY Jackson and BC Binning add a historical dimension to this sweeping display. Works acquired from Karin Bubaš, Rebecca Belmore, and Russna Kaur are indicative of a mid-point in their respective careers and each have also been featured in solo exhibitions at the Museum.

The first solo-exhibition by Marika Swan, A Circle Strong Enough to Carry Both Sides explores her deeply woven understandings of the nature of duality held in all things. In elaborate, large-scale imagery, Swan depicts truths about the human experience through playful imaginings of spiritual realities. Using an emotional visual language entirely her own, Swan’s woodblock printmaking is informed by the rich philosophical and carving traditions of her Nuu-chah-nulth lineage. Introduced to printmaking as a tool for political organizing, her work speaks to the challenges and world we must face now. As the only public art museum dedicated to collecting works on paper, the Burnaby Art Gallery is honoured to host this exhibition, which features new works alongside Swan’s extensive portfolio.