Just as “Umami” represents the rich and complex layers of flavour in cuisine, this exhibition delves into the depth and richness of nikkei artistic identity. Featuring a diverse range of artists, from emerging to established, including Japanese Canadian Legacies Art fund awardees. From traditional to contemporary art practice, the Umami exhibition shares the rich essence of our Japanese Canadian creative community.

Anchoring the full run of the exhibition is an interactive heritage inspired contemporary multi-media installation by Annie Sumi and Brian Kobayakawa called Kintsugi. Kintsugi is best known as a traditional Japanese technique of mending ceramics with gold. Annie and Brian’s Kintsugi conceptually mends broken and shattered experiences of what it means to be Canadian of Japanese ancestry through original music and spoken word activated by the visitor manually manipulating a Singer sewing machine that survived the era of Japanese Canadian internment and dispossession.

In Part 2, we introduce Molly JF Caldwell, the estate of Yoshiko Hirano, Marlene Howell, Vivien Nishi, and Reiko Pleau.  All of the artists investigate Japanese Canadian experience in their own style and media. Caldwell reimagines vintage textiles. Hirano, a long-term resident of Nikkei Home honed her skill in sumi-e.  Howell paints for the love of her heritage and sometimes dark history. Nishi honours her father’s internment era experience with manga-like illustrations, and Pleau mines the complex history and connection to her maternal ancestors. Artists, and Robert Hirano representing his mother’s work, will be in attendance at the Thursday, May 29,  2025 opening and artists’ conversation. The public is invited to attend.

New Acquisitions celebrates recent gifts and purchases to the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection, a creative resource that tells the story of our community and connects Burnaby to artists and practices worldwide. Representing both the collection trends of local citizens who have generously donated artworks, as well as the mandate of the Gallery to preserve works from diverse perspectives into the future, New Acquisitions showcases a deep plurality of voices. The exhibition features recent work from Shuvinai Ashoona, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Rawan Hassan, Karice Mitchell, Kimberly Fulton Orozco, Manuel Axel Strain, and Tania Willard, as well as historical works by Garo Antreasian, Glenn Brown, Honoré Daumier, Salme Kaljur, Concordia Klar, Pedro Puerta, Ann Newdigate, Robert Rauschenberg, Parviz Tanavoli, Kunisada Utagawa, Andy Warhol, and more.

Culture Days takes place from September 19th – October 12th, 2025! Thousands of free events are presented in hundreds of communities across Canada, welcoming millions of participants to create, share, and celebrate a life enriched by arts and culture. Culture Days encourages the public to discover and champion the importance of arts, culture, and heritage in their communities, and to inspire year-round support for local artists, creators, and organizations. Anyone can organize an event and participate in Culture Days! From grassroots community volunteers, public libraries, and independent artists and collectives to major arts, culture, heritage institutions, specialty festivals, and municipalities—everyone is invited to join the celebration!

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.