Manuel Axel Strain: Waking Ground

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Manuel Axel Strain, “a howl,” 2023

oil on canvas with salmon skins, 2'x1'6" (courtesy of the Artist and Unit 17) (Photo: Dennis Ha)

Opening reception: Saturday, March 16, 2-4pm

Waking Ground is a solo exhibition of recent works by Manuel Axel Strain, a 2-spirit xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Simpcw and Syilx artist. Moving within the intertwined relationships between land, their family, and themselves, Strain’s work is often produced in collaboration with their relatives. They simultaneously celebrate the knowledge passed to them from family, while confronting ongoing realities of colonialism.

In interdisciplinary mediums of painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and video, the works within Waking Ground create a through line between ancestral artistic traditions and the present moment. Several paintings imagery inspired by pictographs located across Coast Salish territory, and many images and voices of Strain’s family members are found and heard throughout the Gallery. The land is awakened through the continuance of Indigenous knowledge and gathering of community.