Preston Buffalo | Go Home Yuppie Scum

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Preston Buffalo, “Raymur Crossing February 21 2023,” 2023

stereoscopic image, dimensions variable. (courtesy of the Artist)

SUM Gallery presents Go Home Yuppie Scum, a solo exhibition by Vancouver-based Two-Spirit Cree artist Preston Buffalo.

This exhibition takes its title from graffiti that appeared on empty and/or sold Vancouver houses and lots in the 1980s written as part of the local anti-gentrification movement. Go Home Yuppie Scum is an irreverent take on the “Welcome to Vancouver” View-Master reels, which featured three-dimensional images of Vancouver landmarks as a popular means of enticing tourists to visit during the 1960s through ’80s. By making use of six vintage View-Masters, one vintage View-Master projector, and a series of printed, AR-enhanced images stationed around the interior of SUM gallery, Buffalo reveals a very different perspective of the city: crumbling, graffiti-adorned structures in the Downtown Eastside, disused rail lines, and thickets of overgrown flora – all eerily devoid of inhabitants. Buffalo applies infrared filters to much of his photographic work, transforming familiar Vancouver scenes into vibrant alien landscapes. The result is a series of urban snapshots that subvert the stereotypical “Beautiful British Columbia” tropes by presenting quasi-dystopian scenes that are unsettling, otherworldly, and beautiful.