This artwork by Sonny Assu exemplifies the artist’s distinct practice of merging Northwest Coast Indigenous iconography with the visual language of Western art history. The underlying scene references Emily Carr’s canvas, Street, Alert Bay, sold by Heffel in 2019 and now in the permanent collection of the Audain Art Museum. Assu overlays it with bold, brightly coloured forms drawn from Northwest Coast design. This approach aligns closely with Assu’s broader body of “interventions,” in which he digitally overlays Indigenous motifs onto paintings shaped by a historical gaze. These interventions are rooted in reclaiming visibility within cultural narratives. The neon green, red, and blue forms layered onto the scene echo the ovoids, U forms, and S forms characteristic of Northwest Coast design systems. Their three dimensionality and saturated colour contrast sharply with the historical tones of the original landscape, asserting a contemporary Indigenous presence.

This work was on loan at the Audain Art Museum in the installation “Sonny Assu & Emily Carr: Conversing Cultures” in 2019.