Date: November 3 • 2023
End date: December 21 • 2023
Online: November 10 to December 21, 2023
Photography in the Leonore Peyton Salon
Please note: the Leonore Peyton Salon is a multi-purpose space; therefore, viewing times are limited. Please call 604.664.1636 for viewing availability prior to your visit.
Now more than ever, the arts are being called upon to awaken, move and jolt us into a new way of seeing and being within our environment. We are being called upon to remember what has always been present in us but has laid dormant for so long: that we and the natural world are interconnected, creative beings, wishing to emerge and be witnessed.
My inner landscape was shaken during the experiences of 2020 when the world was thrown into chaos. Human loss, climate catastrophes and racial upheavals unfolded around us begging us to question all that we held to be true. I was grieving and needed a new story, one of beauty and empathy for all creation.
The landscape of the Katzie and Kwikwetlem First Nations has always held me when I most needed it, so I vowed to hold it too, to document it, to give life to it in ways only I knew how. I vowed to behold it, to look beyond the surface and witness the mystery. I have been asking myself these questions to inform my practice: What impact am I making by being here and what impact will I leave when I’m gone? How can my art be of service to the environmental movement?
Beholden is a collection of photographs created since September 2021 as a response to climate and personal grief and as an invitation to see art as a form of ecological protection.
Instagram: @allisonyoussef
Opening Reception
November 17 • 7 pm to 9 pm • 1120 Brunette Avenue, Coquitlam