Valérie d. Walker: Pelagic Transformations

GALLERY 881

881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
gallery881.com
@gallery881_

PELAGIC TRANSFORMATIONS

Exhibition with works by
Valérie d. Walker

Exhibition
February 1 - 22, 2025

Opening Reception
Saturday, February 1, 2025 from 2 - 5pm

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 Renaissance Artist, alchemyst, transmedia maker, educator, curator, Indigo Griot, Radio-Wave creatrix & BIPOC Femme Afro-Futuristic transmitter. She holds 5th level Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) & Chado (tea-ceremony) degrees with Urasenke-Kyoto & lifetimes of Indigo knowledge, she landed on Gaia in Honolulu & has traveled the planet in space and time. Valérie holds a degree in EECS from UC-Berkeley and her MFA from NSCAD University.

Valérie’s artwork explores enviro-positive natural dyeing & printing, fibre-based responsive installations, tactile virtual spaces, solar-powered circuits, story-telling, epigenetic memories, environmentally healing studio processes, craft-based techniques, digitalia, sensoriality and Afro-Futurism. Her curatorial work examines Diasporic revelations, Indigi-Queer Black-Femme representations & Techno-Enviro NightMares.

Valérie has over 20+ years of Grrl Powered radio online from her production & hosting of the XX Files Radio show, @Matricules (https://www.ada-x.org/), Canada's only open-source, feminist digital media art portal. Her installations & dimensional sculptures are exhibited across Canada and the world. Part of the Surrey Art Gallery’s 2017 Ground Signals group exhibition, her Richmond No. 3 Road mentoring project, and commissioned works received outstanding reviews.

Valérie returned to the West Coast 11 years ago, after 20 years in Montréal where she taught Techno-Culture, Arts & Gaming (TAG) & Computation Arts in the Fine Arts Faculty of Concordia University. and mentored at Studio XX (now Ada-X) for 17 years; Valérie produced & hosted the XX Files Radio show, now in year XXVII on CKUT FM & Soundcloud. She has started several alternative, BIPOC, Feminist LGBTQ+ hackerspaces & Alternative Queer Games festivals in Montréal. She teaches InterDisciplinary Foundation Studio, Interactive Wearables, Electronics for Artists, FibreShed Regeneration (TARP) & Indigo dyeing. V serves on various art juries and the boards of Pride in Art and BLAC. She was an artist in residence at the Malaspina Downtown Printing Studios and has her own bio-fermented natural indigo dye studio in East Vancouver, BC. 

valeriedwalker.com