Learn about Indigenous lands in this newly created animation with sound for UrbanScreen

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Marianne Nicolson’s newly created animation with sound The Way In Which It Was Given To Us (2017), on view at UrbanScreen until January 7, references the pictograph as a way of recording stories on the land.

Nicolson has explored the pictograph in previous works, including in her early large scale mural Cliff Painting (1998) and, more recently, in her banner project Inquiry to the Newcomers (2017). The originating images for the latter work are based on a real pictograph that exists at the mouth of the Kingcome River in coastal BC, home of the Dzawada’enuxw People, and depicts original contact with trade ships in 1792. Other Nations local to Surrey share histories of contact, reserve commissions, and processes of dispossession. The artist’s UrbanScreen work is informed by this as well as research into Kwantlen and Semiahmoo pictographs. Nicolson’s work celebrates the re-emergence of Indigenous Peoples’ voices while articulating that there can be no true reconciliation between Indigenous and settler societies without an acknowledgement of Indigenous Peoples’ displacement from their lands.

Marianne Nicolson is a linguist, anthropologist, and a visual artist of Scottish and Dzawada’enuxw First Nations descent based in Victoria, BC. The Dzawada’enuxw People are a member tribe of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

UrbanScreen is an offsite venue of Surrey Art Gallery that shows art after dark. It’s located at 13458 107A Avenue in Surrey, on the west wall of the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre. Exhibitions begin 30 minutes after sunset and end at midnight