Artists Celebrating Diversity: Vancouver Mural Festival Reclaims Spaces

Summer has looked drastically different during a pandemic, but the Vancouver Mural Festival (VMF) persisted for its fifth year, revamping neighbourhoods for the final few weeks of the season. As more and more murals are adorned throughout the city—ranging from the West End, to Strathcona, to South Granville—VMF is spotlighting and celebrating diversity in the Lower Mainland. 

While some of the festival pre-pandemic highlights, like Mount Pleasant’s massive street party, have been cancelled, the essence of VMF has stayed the same: Free and accessible art in public spaces.

 Spreading across nine neighbourhoods, Vancouver became home to 60 new murals as of September 7—curated and completed by a diverse group of artists, including BIPOC, women, minority groups, and local artists. 

After speaking with some of this year’s participating artists, who worked on a range of different projects—from showcasing the city's Black history to environmental concerns— it’s clear why VMF is a much-needed celebration during this tumultuous year. 

Anthony Joseph paints “Hope Through Ashes: A Requiem for Hogan’s Alley.”

Anthony Joseph, a Black artist who has been living in Vancouver for over twenty years, is currently in the process of completing his mural on the Georgia Viaduct. The location is the source of an urban renewal project to create an interurban freeway that began in 1967, which destroyed a predominantly Black neighbourhood located in Strathcona at the southern edge of Chinatown. 

Originally, the mural was meant to be completed in Mount Pleasant, but after moving the project to the very instrument that caused part of Hogan’s Alley to be expropriated, the work took on a more somber tone.  

Joseph noted that he, “didn’t want to make [the mural] the Black community versus the city. I wanted to show that the Black community is part of the city. So by ordering the demolishing and the destruction of Hogan’s Alley, the city of Vancouver is essentially destroying its own cultural fabric.”

While the freeway project was eventually stopped, the viaduct displaced the diverse population that called Hogan’s Alley—the unofficial name for the neighbourhood—home. Joseph wants his mural to showcase how the spirit of the Black community is still alive today, despite the diaspora that ensued. 

This celebration of Black artists is reflected in the festival this year, as VMF had a Black curator, Krystal Paraboo, organize various murals. A recording of the “Artist Talk: Celebrating Black Resurgence,” which features Joseph and three other artists, can be found online. It provides insight into how muralism can work to disrupt anti-Black racism. 

“Murals play off of grassroots movements of taking it to the streets, and it’s one of the most constructive and longest-standing forms of expression that embodies feelings, events, and actions,” says Joseph. “In terms of protesting, that mural still stands along with the people going into the streets to cry for justice, freedom, equal rights, whatever it may be.”

The project serves to bolster the current plaque that commemorates Hogan’s Alley. By including historical figures such as Nora Hendrix and Fred Deal amongst many others, Joseph’s mural both celebrates Vancouver’s Black history and educates those unfamiliar with the neighbourhood. More resources can be found about the site’s history at Hogan’s Alley Society. 

“Give it Time” by Thomas Cannell

Taking place on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, VMF is dedicated to supporting Indigenous artists. The mural of one such artist, Thomas Cannell, can be found on the Downtown Eastside’s Patricia Hotel. 

The enormous mural finds inspiration in a teaching from Cannell’s Coast Salish culture, such that if a creature shows up frequently, it is a sign to focus on areas of personal growth—with the butterfly suggesting transformations.  

“Indigenous art has always been important to Van Mural Fest, representation is increasing every year which it should be. This initiative reflects the city’s art and culture scene today,” says Cannell. “The most important lesson here, is that critics understand that native art is not what you see in a museum, that’s the past. We live now and are evolving and adapting. My blood still comes from this land from thousands of years ago.”  

The festival has always worked to support the reclaiming of spaces for Indigenous artists. For Cannell, this gives him a great sense of pride as a Musqueam artist. 

Although he wishes the community could come together for this year’s VMF events, he’s encouraged by the way Vancouver’s public spaces are still being used to showcase local artists, especially BIPOC stories and voices that have been dismissed for centuries in British Columbia. 

“Citizens of the Lower Mainland are realizing that we are an incredibly influential and powerful nation just as we have always been. We are gentle. Like a beehive.” 

Part of Artist Tyler Toews dumpster mural series “Waste Wear.”

The festival is also giving space for artists like Tyler Toews to voice their concerns about our environmental climate. His murals, titled “Waste Wear” can be found in Harbour Light Alley on Powell Street in Gastown. The piece includes seven dumpsters, all focused on highlighting waste and pollution. 

One dumpster, “Capitalist Daydreams,” Toews says “touches upon a much broader source of the problem and the source of many problems in our world. It’s the capitalist mentality that’s creating the waste problem and that’s creating inequalities in the world.”  

The murals are in partnership with the Gastown Business Improvement Area (BIA), who wanted to raise awareness about climate concerns. Toews, a commercial artist for over twenty years who has completed over a hundred murals, loves having a purpose behind his art.

“I have done a lot of different types of murals over the years, both commercial and other people’s ideas, but when you get the chance to talk about something more meaningful and talk about current issues and environmental issues, I’m much more excited about those projects,” says Toews. 

“I think artists should have freedom of expression regardless of where the money is coming from. It’s important for societies’ well-being to have the arts intertwined into our social network.” 

VMF, in particular, is committed to giving artists spaces to make public art pieces that communicate a message. Toews noted how the festival “makes a lot of muralists out of local artists, just by giving them a wall.” And when asked about the diversity initiatives that the festival implements, he said that “our society is changing, and groups like VMF who get on board and push for the change are part of what is making that stick.”

Toews hopes his series will spark discussions about our on-going waste issues and hopefully inspire us to change what we do for the better. 

You can discover and learn more about over 250 murals throughout Vancouver's neighbourhoods, streets and alleyways by downloading VMF’s app, newly launched this year.