Manuel Axel Strain: xʷəlməxʷ child

Manuel Axel Strain: xʷəlməxʷ child is on view in The Polygon’s ground floor gallery from February 1 – May 11.

About the exhibition
In xʷəlməxʷ child, Manuel Axel Strain draws on Musqueam, Secwépemc, and Syilx ways of knowing, and the discipline of Western psychology. Compositing theories of mind from across their different cultures, Strain imagines the perspective of a child who contemplates the world from beyond these existing frameworks. Through figurative paintings, transformed into pictographs and set against photographic murals, Strain’s work proposes a way of seeing that suspends judgement and challenges divisions such as past and future, old and new, self and other.

In this context, Strain embraces the uncertain and unfamiliar. The table and chairs situated throughout the installation evoke a domestic setting, but their odd dimensions create a sense of strangeness, as if the viewer is very small, or these furnishings have purposes beyond what is expected. Here, the unknown is a powerful presence. Speculation and wonder are productive points of inquiry for Strain, inviting visitors to inhabit the imaginative, transpersonal vantage of xʷəlməxʷ child.

Curated by Elliott Ramsey