Please note that this event has been moved to August 11 at 7pm from the original date

Join Skwxwú7mesh ethnobotanist and artist Cease Wyss in a guided plant tour of her indoor garden installation in Ghosts of the Machine. This original commission features local plants in Wyss’ garden: huckleberries, conifers, blueberries, red osier dogwood, cascara, and various low-growing plants. The garden also features augmented-reality elements that, when scanned using a smartphone, allow users to view original virtual artworks by five Indigenous artists, developed with the support of the IM4 VR/AR Lab.. The IM4 Lab is an Indigenous Futurisms lab that provides training and support for Indigenous people interested in these technologies’ uses. Honouring the teaching that nature is technology, Wyss’s new site-specific installation proposes the potential for our digital media platforms to aid us in re-examining our relationship to land, to family, and to the ecosystems in which we are inseparably enmeshed.

About T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss (Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo, Hawaiian, Swiss) is an educator, interdisciplinary artist and Indigenous ethnobotanist engaged in community-based teaching and sharing. Throughout Wyss’s 30-year practice, Wyss’s work encompasses storytelling and collaborative initiatives through their knowledge and restoration of Indigenous plants and natural spaces. Wyss has been recognised for their traditional knowledge in remediating our relationship to land through digital media, site-specific engagements, and weaving. Wyss has participated and exhibited at galleries, museums, festivals and public space such as Vancouver Art Gallery, Morris, Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery and the PuSh Festival to name a few. Their work can be found in various collections such as the National Library of Canada, Special Collections at the Walter Phillips Gallery, and the Vancouver Public Library.

Image: Alison Boulier