At the base of the original Harbin Gate were ​“Foo Dogs,” or Guardian Lions — traditional Chinese architectural ornaments commonly used to mark gateways and entrances. The new pair of sculptures by Studio F‑Minus are contemporary re-imaginings of those original Lions. _​Invisible Gate_​returns this traditional symbol of the Chinatown community to the site, while also expanding the symbol to contain all the histories of all neighbourhood communities who have intersected with it. Through a series of workshops with the local community, Studio F‑Minus and Edmonton artist Shawn Tse gathered artifacts to embed within the work. Made of layers of transparent material, Studio F‑Minus considers these layers as resembling an archaeological dig: each community leaves a trace of its history through artifacts and objects, and all of these traces organized themselves as layers set into the earth. _​Invisible Gate_​preserves objects contributed by members of the community by embedding them in the layers of this permanent sculpture. In this way, everyone leaves a mark on the site, and the monument celebrates the experiences, both everyday and exceptional, of the people here.

Studio F‑Minus

Brad Hindson is an architect and lighting designer who has notched extensive experience working with Canada’s top architecture and lighting design firms. Working at internationally-acclaimed offices KPMB and Diamond + Schmitt Architects, Hindson has contributed to the design of numerous high-profile buildings internationally, and served as project architect on prominent public art installations. Prior to moving to Toronto, Hindson was a designer at Gabriel Lighting Design, where his clients included the National Arts Centre and the City of Ottawa. He has since continued to lecture on lighting innovation, artistry, and technical execution to an international audience.

Mitchell F Chan is an interactive media artist who has exhibited in galleries across Canada and the United States. He made his American gallery debut in 2009 alongside Robert Rauschenberg at the Alan Avery Art Company in Atlanta, while back home his work continues to attract national media attention for its innovative blend of technology and intuitive human experience. In 2009, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago made him the recipient of their highest award as a Merit Scholar in their innovative Art & Technology Studies department. Most recently, his water-vapor sculpture was exhibited in the iconic John Hancock Tower, as part of an exhibition re-imagining the possibilities of public artworks in the city of Chicago.

Working in collaboration under the banner of Studio F‑Minus, Hindson and Chan have earned numerous plaudits for their work from critics and media outlets as varied as The Toronto Star, The National Post, Boing​bo​ing​.net, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Richard Florida’s Cre​ative​class​.com. Their first collaboration, A Dream of Pastures, opened to a one-night audience of 60 000 people outside the Art Gallery of Ontario. This debut effort was later exhibited as part of the Corcoran Gallery’s travelling exhibition Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, a retrospective on some of the most technologically innovative and significant art of the past 150 years. Since then, their commissions have included the installation of a sound-responsive, environmentally-themed sculpture in Santiago Calatrava’s Allen Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place; an exhibition of light-and-shadow artworks for Toronto’s Luminato Festival; and a series of trompe‑l’oeil sculptures for a new light rail station in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2011, Studio F‑Minus expanded its practice through public art collaborations with architecture firms such as Diamond + Schmitt and Du Toit Allsopp Hillier, and engineering firm Blackwell Bowick. They continue to pursue in new frontiers in lighting, networked technologies, and interactive media.

Sipikiskisiw (Remembers Far Back) features images, documenting Indigenous relation to the Land in Amiskwaciwâskahikan, of an Indian Affairs Papaschase reserve survey map from 1899 and a photograph taken before 1907 of Indigenous men and tipis on the grounds of Fort Edmonton. Using embroidery thread, caribou tufting, porcupine quills, and beadwork; the images are ripped and stitched back together again. According to Sound the rips ​“show the colonial violence that Indigenous people have experienced, including residential school intergenerational trauma, loss of language, and displacement from our territories.” The mending of the images doesn’t fully obscure the rips shares Sound, ​“as the loss, grief, longing, and memory cannot be fully mended and the resiliency required to survive colonialism is also messy and fragile. These losses can never be fully healed but we can process our histories and realities through art, culture and stories.” Papaschase First Nation signed an adhesion to Treaty 6 in 1877. Under treaty they received reserve land in what is now southeast Edmonton. By 1886, they were removed from the land for settler expansion and it was illegally surrendered. Members were forced to take Métis scrip (signing away their treaty rights for a cash payment) or move to nearby reserves. Sound’s great great kokum, Rosalie/​LaRose Gladu, was a member of Papaschase who took Métis scrip and later settled in the Slave Lake area in Treaty 8. For Sound, her family’s forced displacement and connection to these lands is not just a scrip number in the archives.

Michelle Sound

Michelle Sound is a Cree and Métis artist, educator and mother. She is a member of Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation in Treaty 8 Territory, Northern Alberta and she was born and raised on the unceded and ancestral home territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a multidisciplinary visual artist and her art practice includes a variety of mediums including photo based work, textiles, painting and Indigenous material practices. Her artwork often explores her Cree and Métis identity from a personal experience rooted in family, place and history.

She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University, School for the Contemporary Arts, and a Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University Art + Design. Michelle is currently an Indigenous Advisor at Douglas College and has taught workshops as a guest artist at the Richmond Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery. Public art pieces include a utility box art wrap (City of Vancouver), street banners (City of New Westminster) and a painted mural exhibition in Ottawa, 2018 — ​“nākateyimisowin/​Taking Care of Oneself”, curated by Joi Arcand. Michelle was a 2021 Salt Spring National Art Award Finalist and has had recent exhibitions at Neutral Ground ARC (Regina), Daphne Art Centre (Montréal), the Polygon Gallery and the grunt gallery (Vancouver). Michelle recently completed an artist residency at the Burrard Arts Foundation culminating in the exhibition ​“Aunties Holding It Together”.

This installation consists of five standing sculptures inspired by how children freely interpret and imagine the world through play. The tree-like quality suggests the idea of a magical forest, while the ambiguity of the gestural forms allows for other interpretations, such as tentacles, snakes, arms, etc. The openness of the design encourages active and imaginative play in a non-prescribed way and creates a stage for children and people of all ages to create a world around them. The colour palette and design are bold and contemporary, giving the artwork an urban look and making it engaging for all ages. This child-friendly project is a collaboration between the Edmonton Arts Council, local artists, the Child Friendly Edmonton Initiative to involve children living in Edmonton in ways to use art to incorporate playful, child-friendly components within the Civic Precinct. Two locations in the Civic Precinct will include public art pieces that encourage play. These pieces will be installed during the construction of two projects in this area. 1. East Gardens – east side of Churchill Square 2. Centennial Plaza – south of Stanley A. Milner Library The final design for the permanent public child-friendly artwork explores the idea of connection through a set of two sculptures that evoke both nature and whimsical imagery. The sculptures complement each other and connect the two spaces. For more information and updates about the project in progress, please visit the City of Edmonton’s site.

Erin Pankratz & Christian Pérès Gibaut

A professional artist team with more than 10 years of experience in public art, integrating artwork into architectural projects, and creating customized community and team building experiences.

Erin Pankratz (erin​pankratz​.com) was born in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. Her body of work includes murals, contemporary mosaics, public art, residential and corporate commissions, and collaborative projects. Two-time SAMA’s Innovation in Mosaic Award winner, she has exhibited in France, Italy, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Canada, and the United States. She lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta.

Christian Pérès Gibaut (chris​tian​peres​gibaut​.com) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His body of work includes paintings, murals, mosaics, public art, and collaborative projects. A recipient of the 2019 Cultural Diversity in the Arts grant, he has worked and exhibited in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Canada, Colombia, France, Mexico, Uruguay, and the United States. He lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta.

Play It By Ear is an interactive sound sculpture inviting a neighbourhood to talk to itself. The artwork is a series of brightly coloured telephone pillars placed throughout Butler Memorial Park. Each pair of telephones is connected by looping ​‘land lines’ curling underfoot. Park visitors can pick up any telephone and a matching phone will ring elsewhere in the park – like a hard-wired walkie-talkie system. If nobody picks up, you’ll be connecting to a voicemail where you can leave a message for your neighbours – and listen to the messages they’ve left for you! The phones invite playful possibilities for encounter through an invisible network of connections that mirrors the community of West Jasper Place.

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett (Calgary, Canada) work with diverse mediums and materials, ranging from artificial light to re-appropriated urban debris, often resulting in public sculptures and installations.
Beckoning viewers with interactive contexts and novel materials, their projects invite strangers to share in experiential moments, prompting collaborative viewership. Using mass-produced objects as a reference to cities as an immeasurable quantity of materials, people, and situations, Caitlind & Wayne evoke the possibility of renewed understanding through a critical shift in perspective. Beautiful, subversive, playful, and radically inclusive, their work emphasizes transformation above all else.

Their collaborative artworks have appeared at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Japan Alps Art Festival (Omachi, Japan), Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, USA), Pera Museum
(Istanbul, Turkey), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), and others. In 2013, CLOUD was short-listed for an Innovation by Design Award by Fast Company.