Join us on Thursday, July 11 for the Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis + Coloratura Opening Celebration.

7:00 pm - Doors
7:30 pm - Remarks

Admission is free

Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis is on view at The Polygon July 12 – September 29.
Coloratura is on view at The Polygon until Spring 2025

Stay late for an outdoor screening of Stop Making Sense at 9pm

About Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis
What does it mean to be an icon and who, or what, becomes iconic? Icons carry authority, in their highly symbolic and instant recognisability. The new, landmark series Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis, by acclaimed photographer Martine Gutierrez, refuses ready understandings of identity, gender, and culture. Across seventeen self-portraits, Gutierrez embodies a pantheon of legendary figures – all female or feminized – from across the world’s legends, histories, and myths. Her re-imaginings of such endlessly reproduced figures reference the long visual lineages in which these images circulate – from traditional iconography and Renaissance painting to contemporary fashion editorials and pop media – while offering an interpretation that challenges all these depictions. Through the “anti-icon”, Gutierrez stretches the malleability of the self, and of the social imagination that shapes it.
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About Coloratura
Coloratura is a new outdoor installation by Brooklyn-based Canadian artist Tau Lewis. This monumental work marks the sixth installment in a 10-year commissioning partnership with Burrard Arts Foundation, supported by the Chan Family Foundation. On July 11 Tau Lewis will expand Coloratura with a second site-specific sculpture, Fantasia, located in the Denna Homes Gallery on The Polygon’s upper floor, and on view from July 12-September 29. Fantasia marks origin point where the flowers germinate. From here, a lone vine grows up from the floor and into the ceiling, visually linking the indoor and outdoor works.
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Banner Image: Martine Gutierrez, Cleopatra from ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS (detail), 2021. Courtesy the artist; RYAN LEE, New York; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; and Josh Lilley, London. Tau Lewis, Colouratura, 2024. Photo by Akeem Nermo.