NEXT: A Series of Artist Projects from the Pacific Rim
Marianne Nicolson
The House of the Ghosts

Marianne Nicolson The House of The Ghosts, 2008 drawing, projection Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

Marianne Nicolson, a member of the Dzawada’enuxw Tribe of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation, first came to prominence in 1998 when she scaled a vertical rock face in Kingcome Inlet to paint a 28 x 38-foot pictograph—the first in the inlet for over sixty years—to mark the continued vitality of her ancestral village of Gwa’yi. In a similarly monumental gesture, Nicolson’s site-specific project The House of the Ghosts imaginatively transforms the Georgia Street façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery into a Northwest Coast ceremonial house. Using high-powered lighting, Nicolson will project the vision of a house front and totem poles onto the Gallery façade from dusk to dawn every night. By altering the Gallery in this way, the building itself becomes a site of cultural exchange, emphasizing its importance as a transformative space while wryly commenting on its historic role as a courthouse and jail where, decades ago, First Nations peoples were punished for defying the government’s Potlach ban. Nicolson sees this work as a positive and symbolic reassertion of a culture in a place where it was once forbidden, in a gesture that speaks to the vibrancy of Kwakwaka’wakw culture and the need to sustain it. The House of the Ghosts is a site-specific artwork illuminating the Georgia Street facade of the Vancouver Art Gallery from dusk to dawn every night. This site-specific project is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Daina Augaitis, chief curator/associate director. It is generously supported by the Audain Foundation. PRESENTING SPONSOR: The Audain Fondation