Memory, legacy and commemoration
Who decides what is worth remembering
A commemorative landscape is usually built by a few people on behalf of many. These works invert that. The people whose history it is decide what the monument says, and then make it with their own hands.
In depth
The Belonging Action
Vancouver, British Columbia, 2012. Eighty people painted the stories of migration to this land since time immemorial into a single permanent work, 24 by 32 feet, on the east-facing wall of the Harbour Centre parkade at Homer and Cordova.
Commissioned through the Celebrate Vancouver 125 Community Mural Program, recorded in the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Registry, and still on the wall.
Location: 350 W Cordova Street, Vancouver · Dimensions: 24 x 32 ft, acrylics on wood panels · Participants: 80, over five months · Budget: $45,000 · Commissioning body: City of Vancouver, Vancouver 125 Community Mural Grant · Status: permanent
Materials, siting and care
- Medium and fabrication
- Acrylic on wood panels, fabricated for exterior mounting and installed as a single 24 by 32 foot field.
- Site and site-responsiveness
- The east-facing elevation of the Harbour Centre parkade at Homer and Cordova, on unceded Coast Salish territory. The subject, migration to this land since time immemorial, was chosen for this site and this city.
- Public realm
- A pedestrian route at street level in downtown Vancouver, read daily at walking pace rather than visited.
- Scale
- 24 by 32 feet, sized to hold at the distance the street allows.
- Permanence and weathering
- Permanent exterior installation, on the wall since 2012 and exposed to the Vancouver climate for fourteen years.
- Record
- Recorded in the City of Vancouver Public Art Registry, which is the civic record of the work and its siting.
Eighty stories, one wall
Each participant worked their own story of migration to this land, and the finished mural holds all of them.
Also in this line of work
Our Painted Responsibilities
A travelling participatory mural made from 2014 alongside the Lummi Nation’s House of Tears Carvers, as a totem pole carved by Jewell James travelled from the Salish Sea toward the Alberta tar sands. Hundreds of people painted into it at stops across four northwest states and British Columbia. It hung above the altar at St Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle for the journey’s blessing in August 2016, and a collectively painted mural from the journey was among the objects shown in Kwel’ Hoy: We Draw the Line! at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, from October 2017 to March 2018. It is now held by the House of Tears Carvers.
Behind the speakers, above the altar, was the Sacred Obligations mural. This 24’ by 14’ artwork, directed by the participatory muralist Melanie Schambach and created by individuals across the Pacific Northwest and Canada, illuminated the event with its sublime beauty. totempolejourney.com, on the blessing at St Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle, 25 August 2016
The exhibit includes the totem pole, a documentation of its journey from Washington State to Pennsylvania, and objects collected on the journey: a jar of water from the Columbia River contaminated with coal; a mural collectively painted by dozens of people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, along the totem pole journey, and a 150-year-old sacred pipe. Martha Baskin, Truthout, 1 November 2017
The work is recorded under two names: Sacred Obligations while it was being made, and Our Painted Responsibilities once finished.
Partner: Lummi Nation House of Tears Carvers · Master Carver: Jewell James, Sit ki kadem · Dimensions: 24 x 14 ft, acrylic on canvas · Funding: volunteer supported · Held by: House of Tears Carvers
Related work
| Project | Year | Place | Partner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ursuline Heritage AliveThe Ursuline Sisters' stories gathered one by one, then translated into images by students, staff and alumni. Each piece was hand painted separately, then composed digitally into four panels spanning the order's founding to its future. Unveiled in June 2023 to around five hundred guests. | 2023 | Chatham, ON | Ursuline College of Chatham |
| Brescia Centennial PortraitureA 16 by 24 foot portrait of a women's university's first hundred years, made between 2018 and 2020 with students, faculty, staff, alumni and faith leaders, at four levels of involvement: project members, story writers, painters and viewers. | 2018 to 2020 | London, ON | Brescia University College |
| Our Painted ResponsibilitiesA travelling mural carried alongside the Lummi Nation totem pole journeys from the Salish Sea toward the Alberta tar sands. Hundreds of hands. | 2014 to 2017 | Salish Sea to Alberta | Lummi Nation House of Tears Carvers |
| E Ala EA painted mural carried across the country with the Red Road to DC totem pole journey in 2021, added to by hundreds of contributors along the route. Now exhibited at East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, Washington. | 2021 | Across the United States | House of Tears Carvers and Se’Si’Le |
| Syrian Youth Voices: We Still Have HopeYoung people newly arrived in Canada picturing hope on their own terms, with the Muslim Resource Centre. | 2019 to 2020 | London, ON | Muslim Resource Centre |
| Granddaughters MuralsFive panels made with three First Nations elders and their granddaughters, and with five young artists from the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations and from Vancouver's immigrant communities, at the request of the Stanley Park Ecology Society. Three of the five are displayed at the Nature House in Stanley Park. The Society's 2025 annual report describes taking “meaningful initial steps toward re-building relationships with the Artists”, and its 2026 report describes that path of reconciliation with the mural artists and with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations as continuing. | 2013 | Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC | Stanley Park Ecology Society |
In photographs
This line of work
