kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm
mark and make light
Manuel Axel Strain + Kalli Van Stone
Residency
14 July – 18 July 2025
Opening Reception
Friday, July 18, 2025, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Exhibition
19 July – 23 August 2025
images: (above) sw̓əw̓ikiʔstm · nx̌ʷntk̓ʷitkʷ – lightning · columbia river, Kalli Van Stone, digital image, 2025; (top right) Together with Paclitaxel (detail), Manuel Axel Strain, Oil and acrylic on canvas on painted wall and acrylic on small canvas installation view, July 2025; with Silver wall engraving featuring an image of Great-Great Grandma Emma MacDonald and acrylic wall painting, 2025; (middle centre) exhibition layout with artwork titles for kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm (mark and make light), Manuel Axel Strain and Kalli Van Stone, Oxygen Art Centre, 2025 (print)
kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm (mark and make light) began a year ago when artists Kalli Van Stone and Manny Axel Strain met at Oxygen Art Centre to develop a new body of work using a laser, a mirror, a speaker, and a microphone. Along with song and drum work, the laser is arranged to interpret the rhythmic vibrations of traditional Syilx song into imagery resembling pictographs and abstract forms, which have influenced both individual and collaborative artworks included in this exhibition.
The artists returned to the centre to continue this initial collaboration, resulting in an exhibition that translates these visual forms into an installation that explores spatial, temporal, familial, and embodied connections. All works on view in kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm (mark and make light) were created during their residency period, spanning over five days. The exhibition features paintings by both artists unified by fields of colour that shift between the micro — from chemical elements to each sand grain — and the macro — from geospatial mapping of pit house sites to aerial views of the Columbia River. Dried camas bulbs hold these fields of thought and experience together, in light.
The artists were particularly eager to reconnect with the land, plants, and waterways of the West Kootenay region through their family lineages. The Columbia River dam and ongoing systemic oppression continue to enforce the Syilx Okanagan Nation’s colonial separation from this territory. The title, kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm (mark and make light), refers both to the initial use of lasers for mark making and to a sense of joy in returning to these lands to gather, create, dance, and sing together.In their practices, the artists offer opportunities for viewers to look beyond the settler colonial perspective through their chosen mediums of painting and installation (Axel Strain), weaving, and performance (Van Stone).
Axel Strain’s paintings depict regional ecosystems in the style of traditional Western landscape painting, overlaid with Syilx pictographs such as two human figures and microscopic chemical compounds: lithium from hot springs and paclitaxel from yew trees. The paintings are displayed on fields of colour that break up the white cube, creating a spatial connection through varying horizon lines. Following this approach, they also include a diptych, Everything will be okay until coyote is here (2025), which hangs in the centre of the space. Each panel shows a black and white portrait of a matriarch linking Strain and Van Stone with a collage of pictographs, symbols, and landscapes, such as wildfires and waterways.
Strain also has a laser-etched panel of their Great-Great-Grandma Emma MacDonald, installed beneath the gallery’s boiler, meant to reflect viewers and the bright colours spilling from the wall, floor, and artwork. Below, a small spider hangs with a sunset beam, referencing the Syilx Okanagan Three Sisters story, brought into the space by Van Stone’s painting of a Pika on the adjacent wall.
images: (left) Everything will be okay until coyote is here (detail), Manuel Axel Strain, Diptych, oil and chalk pastel on paper installed on hanging MDF panel by rope, camas bulbs installation view, July 2025; with Silver wall engraving featuring an image of Great-Great Grandma Emma MacDonald and acrylic wall painting, 2025; (right) qʷc̓iʔ – pithouse, Kalli Van Stone, Sand from the homelands, compound, and glue on canvas installation view, July 2025; (bottom) drawing of camas plant with flower and root
By referencing pictographic and petroglyph depictions in their practices, the artists evoke nuances between inclusion and exclusion, past and present, and what is spoken about versus what is intentionally withheld concerning the entanglements of Indigenous identity, family, and queerness. Van Stone features a series of sand paintings that relate to her performance practice of drawing pictographs into the land, captured aerially by drone. These paintings and performances reflect culturally significant gestures needed for root-digging camas bulbs or guiding ore through water on a sturgeon-nosed canoe. Van Stone’s gestures are briefly held in the wet sand where water meets land, and again here where sand intersects with canvas.
Pícaʔ uɬ sx̌wal̓ítx̌waʔ – root digger and camas (2025) features both a gestural interpretation of the tool and the culturally significant plant side by side, highlighted by colours found on the camas plant—neon green, periwinkle blue, and gold brown. Van Stone includes references to her materials within the exhibition, showing hanging tools made by her brother Eric on the gallery’s slat wall, hanging camas bulbs from the rope holding Strain’s diptych, and sand gathered from her homelands. She gestures towards the land even more by painting two orb-like forms in the gallery. Referring to geospatial mapping that documents pithouse depressions into the earth, the orb-like forms connect the artworks to what is both a reverberation and a marking of space, of home in deep time.
Alongside her sand paintings, Van Stone also features a digital print showing an aerial map of the Columbia River (above), modified to look like a lightning strike. It serves as a reference point within the larger visual language of this exhibition, highlighting connections and contrasts embedded in the land and waterways. kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm (mark and make light) emphasizes the gaps between these points of contact—the macro and micro, the persistent presence of the past through land, story, movement, and art. The artists create a constellation within the exhibition space where these gaps are bridged across time and difference—a dense camas meadow blooming along the Columbia River.
– notes on the exhibition, July 2025
Axel-Strain and Van Stone were artists-in-residence from July 14, 2025, to July 18, 2025, where they prepared for their exhibition kt̓kmin uɬ c̓ik̓ʷm (mark and make light), which is now on view at Oxygen Art Centre from July 19, 2025, to August 23, 2025. The Opening Reception was held on Friday, July 18, 2025, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm and featured a performance by the artists.
Oxygen Art Centre is an artist-run centre located at #3-320 Vernon Street along the alleyway behind Baker Street. Hours of operation are Wednesdays to Saturdays from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Admissions is free.
About the Artists
Image: Manuel Axel Strain (left) + Kalli Van Stone (right), Courtesy the Artists
Manuel Axel Strain
Manuel Axel Strain is a 2-Spirit artist from the lands and waters of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Simpcw and Syilx peoples, based in the sacred region of their q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie) and qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen) relatives. Strains mother is Tracey Strain and father is Eric Strain, Tracey’s parents are Harold Eustache (from Chuchua) and Marie Louis (from nk̓maplqs), Eric’s Parents are Helen Point (from xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) and John Strain (from Ireland). Although they attended Emily Carr University of Art + Design they prioritize Indigenous epistemologies through the embodied knowledge of their mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents and ancestors.
Creating artwork in collaboration with and reference to their relatives, their shared experiences become a source of agency that resonates through their work with performance, land, painting, sculpture, photography, video, sound and installation. Their artworks often envelop subjects in relation with ancestral and community ties, Indigeneity, labour, resource extraction, gender, Indigenous medicine and life forces. Strain often perceives their work to confront and undermine the imposed realities of colonialism. Proposing a new space beyond its oppressive systems of power. They have contributed work to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, the UBCO Fina gallery, were long listed for the 2022 Sobey Award and were a recipient of the 2022 Portfolio Prize. [https://www.manuelaxelstrain.com/]
Kalli Van Stone
iskwist Kalli Van Stone. isqilxwskwist spyu7. Kn suqnaqinx nal secwepemc. Kn tl kelowna nal tkemlups. in kxlexehap iskwist Brenda louis ul Gary Van Stone. In cultns iskwists Edna Joseph tl chu chua, mike louis tl suknawqin, howard van stone tl america, ul Doreen Perry née white tl stucxtuws. kn xminx i nqwinm, qwaymncut ul qyant. kn npyils i ckwul i sqilxwcawt, tl i tmxulaxw, i psnqsilx, iksmeepnunem i nqilxcn ul secwepemctsin.
My name is Kalli Van Stone. I am suqnawqin or syilx okanagan and secwepemc from the north end of Okanagan Lake. My parents are brenda louis and gary van stone. My grand parents are edna joseph from chu chua, mike louis from okanagan indian band, howard van stone from america, and doreen perry nee white from bonaparte. I love music, writing, dance, making regalia and instruments. I am happy to work with syilx and secwepemc ways of life, on the land, with my relatives, and learning my languages. I enjoy revitalizing traditional practices and bringing my own creativity to new forms. I am working on publishing a poetry book, recording songs, starting a dance group, getting my laser installation into art spaces, and building up more support and knowledge for what’s to come. Lim lemt and kukwstsétsemc
This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, and the Regional District of Central Kootenay ReDi program.