Karen Zalamea

My ties to the Joyce-Collingwood food hub in East Vancouver, a cluster of local businesses primarily run and supported by the Filipino diaspora, stem from my childhood and adolescence in the neighbourhood. As a longstanding community locus where connection is sustained through the consumption of traditional Filipino foods and products, a looming development proposal at the time threatens its displacement. Sensing the potential loss of these cultural assets through gentrification, I recorded what may be erased in the near future.

Made by stitching together 60 images to create a single monumental photograph, the work honours the fortitude required to establish and maintain these businesses and celebrates this vital community space for gathering and exchange. When considering Vancouver’s history of displacement, this work speaks to how disposable communities are to gentrification and how this act of erasure dilutes the already existing cultural fabric of what makes Vancouver vibrant, unique, and a place of belonging.

Featured in group exhibitions Prevailing Landscapes (Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art, North Vancouver, 2024), Here and Now (Pendulum Gallery, Vancouver, 2023)