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We Built a House Out of the Things We Had Gathered' Install, OR GALLERY, Vancouver, Photo: Dennis Ha, 2018
"Meticulous drawings by Leya Tess subvert settler-colonial maps of the British Columbia coastline by repopulating the terrain with the plant and animal assemblages that define this region. Tess’s organic forms variously erase and highlight certain features of the maps in correlation with her lived experiences of these areas and the local ecosystems."
Laurie White, Curator of the Group Exhibition
'We Built a House out of the Things We Had Gathered'
OR Gallery, Vancouver
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In the Calm / In the Surge/ Somewhere Between Paradise and Desolation, OR GALLERY, Photo: Dennis Ha, 2018
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That Day Blackfish Sound Became The Bermuda Triangle, OR GALLERY, Photo: Dennis Ha, 2018
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Like How They Took all the Agates Away from Agate Beach?, OR GALLERY, Photo: Dennis Ha, 2018
Flat As a Pancake, OR GALLERY, Photo: Dennis Ha, 2018
The Price of Land?, from the show Bathymetry Lines @ ARC HIVE
Greenhorne in Gwaii Haanas, Circumnavigation of Louise, from the show Bathymetry Lines @ ARC HIVE
Flat as a Pancake (The Sound was a Mirror), 2018, from the show Bathymetry Lines @ ARC HIVE
Paper charts provide a singular, flattened depiction of land and seascapes. They can remind us that so many place names have been replaced, erased and arbitrarily given.
What is lost when new ways are found?
These drawings come from time spent learning to navigate and act as a sea kayak expedition guide on the Pacific coast.