Listening Place (Under Burrard Bridge)

2022, chromogenic print

In this photograph with its single-point perspective, a mammoth bridge with repeating concrete arches appears to recede into history. Under the arches, people in camp chairs look small in relation to the built form. Seated there are Chung-soon Yoon and Hereditary Chief Találsamkin Siyám Bill Williams of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), representatives of two different cultures colonized by others. One chair is left empty for the ancestors; seated in the other two are adult children from each family. To this intimate intergenerational group Chief Bill recounts the colonialist crimes upon which the structure was built: the dispossession, the forced dislocation, the attempted eradication of a people and the burning of their homes. The bridge testifies to the naturalization of the past’s vision of “progress”; the photograph documents a witnessing of that past—a listening place.

Listening Place (Under Burrard Bridge), 2022, (installation view), chromogenic print, 81.3 x 121.9 cm (32 x 48 inches), The Image Centre, Photo credit: James Morley

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