Sustaining Apertures marks the first exhibition by Lys Divine Ndemeye and Colin Berg Mbugua. The discursive project explores the artists’ collaborative practice and builds upon their significant contributions to intersectional conversations around social and environmental justice—through place-based installation and design in contemporary art, architecture, and community planning.

The newly commissioned sculptural works presented within Sustaining Apertures engage community-based knowledge and supports, including cultural practices as they relate to ancestral food cultivation, community organizing, and storytelling. From light-based interventions to alternative architectural and archival practices, the lessons nurtured through the exhibition invite opportunities to experience diverse cultural teachings, traditions, and values.

Sustaining Apertures will be the first public viewing of Daylight (2024), an immersive pavilion composed of a central aperture that beams light onto a constellation of plantings amid a system of sustenance. The continual flow of water within the pavilion references the transformative power of Skwachàys, where Or Gallery is currently located, as a place where salt marshes and freshwater springs once abundantly flowed. Daylight (2024), honours ancestral relations to sustenance alongside the protocols necessary to support healthy ecosystems and powerful connections for many generations to come.

Together Ndemeye and Mbugua recognize that the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ people and territories are timeless. The artists’ social and architectural explorations pay honour and respect to how vast relations have shaped the many publics that have emerged out of the history of this place—specifically, the rich and culturally diverse local community in the area immediately surrounding the Or Gallery in Chinatown, Hogan’s Alley, Strathcona, the Downtown East Side, False Creek Flats, and adjacent neighbourhoods.

In partnership with Urbanarium and the Capture Photography Festival, Or Gallery will present a series of programs that expand, transform, and activate the conceptual territory of the artwork and exhibition themes.

Virtual Tour