GALLERY 881
881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
gallery881.com
@gallery881_
PELAGIC TRANSFORMATIONS
Solo Exhibition by Valérie d. Walker
Exhibition
February 1 - 22, 2025
Opening Reception
Saturday, February 1, 2025 from 2 - 5pm
Black Elder Poetry by Sista C
Saturday, February 1, 2025 from 3 - 3:30pm
Artist Talk
Saturday, February 22, 2025 from 2 - 3pm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
Pelagic Transformations is a Black History Month project (February 2025) by Valérie d. Walker at Gallery 881 – a lens-based exhibition space located in Vancouver’s historic Black Strathcona neighbourhood on Coast Salish lands.
Valérie d. Walker’s Pelagic Transformations at Gallery 881 taps into Indigo’s material, cultural and spiritual ties to Afrofuturistic, African-Diaspora cosmology, transforming the Gallery 881 space into a portal that connects Black Strathcona’s past and present with an envisioned future. The installation combines textile panels and digital giclée prints to construct a surrealist Afrofuturist labyrinthine environment. The textiles transform the gallery into a tactile portal of Indigo-dyed oceanic visions. Her digital prints offer apertures or augmented-mirrors into alternative worlds, where Indigo is the connecting fluid of our tissues. Pelagic Transformations invites visitors to experience Black History Month not only as a time for reviewing the past, but also an opportunity to experience alternative cultural timelines and unrealized future possibilities.
ARTIST BIO
Valérie d. Walker is a force of nature. Materiality rooted, trans-media artist, alchemyst, Indigo Griot, 21st Century Renaissance Artist, educator, curator, Radio-Wave creatrix & BIPOC Femme Afro-Futuristic Time-Traveller. She holds 5th level Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) & Chado (tea-ceremony) degrees with Urasenke-Kyoto & lifetimes of Indigo knowledge. V landed on Gaia in Honolulu & has traveled the planet in space and time. Valérie holds degrees in EECS from UC-Berkeley & MFA from NSCAD University, Halifax N.S..
Valérie’s studio-centered artwork interweaves enviro-positive processes, self-healing, natural dyeing, hand-shaped resist patterning, natural inks, katazomé (hand cut stencils), pigment printing, quotidian femme-life actions, sensorially immersive fibre-based installations, story-telling and Black Panther-esque community-centric activism, epigenetic memories and Afro-Futurism. Her curatorial work explores Diasporiac revelations, Hawai’ian-Indigo-Queer Black Other Femme representations & Techno-Enviro Transformative Dreaming.
Valérie has over 24+ years of Grrrl-Powered radio online producing & hosting the XX Files Radio show (https://www.ada-x.org/ or SoundCloud fFfiles). V’s installations & dimensional sculptures are exhibited across Canada and the world. V’s work in the Surrey Art Gallery’s 2017 Ground Signals group exhibition is now part of the SAG permanent collection. Her Richmond No. 3 Road mentoring project, and commissioned works received outstanding reviews.
Valérie returned to the Pacific Coast ~11 years ago, after 2.5 decades in Montréal, where she taught Techno-Culture, Arts & Gaming (TAG) & Computation Arts in the Fine Arts Faculty of Concordia University while creating the Indigo Dyeing Art space, EspaceFibre and Digital Ludology Techno-Art Performance space alongside the Lachine Canal in Little Burgundy, Montréal’s Historical Black Quartier. Involved with Studio XX (now Ada-X) from its beginning, Valérie produced & hosted the XX Files Radio show, still live on CKUT FM & Soundcloud as fFiles. V started several alt- BIPOC, Feminist LGBTQ+ hackerspaces & Queer&Grrl-Positive Game Festivals. She teaches Inter-Disciplinary Foundation Studio, Interactive Wearables, Electronics for Artists, FibreShed Regeneration (TARP) and Indigo naturally. She works with community empowerment centers, serves on various art juries and the Boards of Pride in Art and BLAC. She was an initial artist in residence at the Malaspina Downtown Printing Studios & maintains two bio-fermented natural indigo dye vats in her studio in East Vancouver, BC. Valérie was welcomed to the unceded lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/ Tsleil-Waututh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations by Hereditary Chief Marilyn Gabriel.