
What If It’s Raining?
In collaboration with artists and participants at Gallery Gachet and EWMA (Enterprising Women Making Art).
Each participant is provided with an umbrella, an iconic and essential tool in exploring the city of Vancouver. Over the course of several weeks or months, participants alter and embellish their umbrellas. All participants are then instructed in the rules of proper umbrella etiquette (and dis-etiquette). As we employ these rules of dis//etiquette to choreograph our movements, our walk as a group from stop to stop becomes a performance. These unexpected gestures will quietly insert themselves into ordinary goings on and turn a sleepy head or two. Our Procession, from Gallery Gachet to Oppenheimer Park, is led by the Carnival Band, the marching band and community orchestra, to much fanfare.
At the walk’s final destination, the umbrellas are hung amidst a canopy of white fairy lights, a beacon of unity and light during some of the darkest and coldest days in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. At the end of the 3-day festival, the umbrellas are free to be taken by members in the community, lending some humour, absurdity and celebration to the simple act of trying to stay out of the rain.
This project was a part of the HomeGround Festival, an annual 3-day festival in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Thank you to the support of BC Translink, who donated many umbrellas that were inadvertently left behind on transit.
Gallery Gachet, EWMA (Enterprising Women Making Art) & Oppenheimer Park
2017