Zachery Cameron Longboy: Guardian of Sleep

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Zachery Cameron Longboy, "Guardian of Sleep," 2022

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Morphing animations reminiscent of petroglyph drawings, running packs of caribou, and footage of the baton-twirling artist leading a parade out of the forest are some of the imagery in Guardian of Sleep, Zachery Cameron Longboy’s video installation born from a dream.   

Like dreams themselves, this digital diary collage of found and filmed footage, performance, and animations manipulate, twist, and transform into each other. Longboy sees dreams as ways of putting things together and are to be guarded. Guardian of Sleep encourages the viewer moving into Longboy’s dream to think of their own messages coming to them through this medium. What did last night’s slumber tell you?

Created completely on his iPhone, this work is the latest in Longboy’s video and performance-based arts practice spanning from the 90s to present, which references the artist’s layered experiences of identity. Born in Churchill, Manitoba of Sayisi Dene lineage and based in Vancouver, Longboy questions gender norms and considers the relationship between our environment and the health of individuals and communities.

Curator of Guardian of Sleep, Surrey Art Gallery’s Education & Engagement Coordinator Alanna Edwards says, “This video installation speaks to having pride in one’s identities and to survival, community, and joy. Longboy thoughtfully brings together imagery, sculptural elements, and sound in a collage-like experience—reminders to be true to ourselves and of the interconnectedness of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.”

Celebrate this exhibition at our fall opening on September 17 and hear from Longboy himself at Surrey Art Gallery Association’s Thursday Artist Talk on November 3. The opening reception will also celebrate the Gallery’s other fall exhibits: video-based artwork in Poets with a Video Camera and Henry Tsang: Tansy Point; two multimedia exhibits that speak to the plurality of visualizing Blackness in Concealed Cultures and I see; I breathe; I am!; the colourful vinyl murals Echoes by Atheana Picha and It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see by Sandeep Johal; paintings in Fraser Valley Chapter Presents: Fresh Paint! and mixed media in Surrey Art Teachers Association: Connect.

About the Artist

Zachery Cameron Longboy is a video maker and performance/installation artist. Born in Churchill, Manitoba of Sayisi Dene lineage, Longboy places his multiple identities as a White-adopted/Native gay/Two-Spirit/Sixties Scoop survivor at the centre of his multidisciplinary practice. His intensely felt, hybridly layered videos often use his complex performance-installations as a departure point. Longboy is nationally honoured and widely shown in Queer and First Nations venues, as well as in public collections at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Winnipeg Art Gallery, Glenbow Museum (Calgary), and The Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa). Numerous screenings include The Edmonton Art Gallery, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), and Images Festival.