If you’re a long-time Coquitlam resident, it’s likely you’ve never seen the city quite like Zebulon Zang.
A Dr. Charles Best secondary graduate, Zang is presenting his first solo show in the art gallery at the Evergreen Cultural Centre this and next month.
No Name Creek is a curious exhibit from start to end, one that highlights the often-neglected — and ironic — spaces in between the industrial, commercial and residential zones, predominately set in his stomping grounds of Maillardville.
His narrative starts with a massive photo of No Name Creek, its sign and riparian greenery. Zang found the area years ago and it intrigued him that the unidentified watercourse was close to a major big box grocery store, known for its blatant branding.
To bring life to his beloved anonymous space, Zang beautified the massive photograph with real blackberry plantings at its base as well as reclaimed ceramic bowls filled with water and a light box to nourish them.
Blackberries themselves play a major role in Zang’s display.
The fruit-bearing plant, which is common in Coquitlam, has resilience — much like the city Zang interprets. “It’s the only fruit-bearing plant found on every continent,” he said during a tour of his show last Friday. “That’s got to count for something.”
Through a door that he salvaged from a Maillardville teardown home, viewers enter a hallway with a spotlight on a glass-encased, bronze-cast bowl of Himalayan blackberries, an invasive species.
Zang treats his bowl of fermented blackberries like a relic — similar in style to how Europeans showcase the bones of saints: In sacred empty rooms where silence prevails.
Here, Zang wants to put weight on the process of change, much like how Coquitlam is developing.
The hallway leads to a third room where industry takes precedence. In a way, he pays homage to Fraser Mills by photographing the ever-changing landscape. The first image is an abstract diagram of what it means to exist in the city, Zang said.
Next up is a hot-metal typeset, used in the press, that reads (backwards) True Photograph Of. The lead letters are now pressed into the wall from people who have touched it since the exhibit opened March 5. “I like to think that every photo dreams to be true and real,” he said.
Beside it is a video of a flame, in which the viewer has to peep through the wall.
Five panel vista shots follow, with images of pavement tar fill-ins on top; Zang liked the idea of interrupting the images. “They’re like hieroglyphs on the road,” he said, adding, “Coquitlam sells itself as a natural forested land but it’s so untrue. We are very much car centric. We need roads to connect us to the nature.”
Zang also created a kind of living room — complete with a recycled couch from Craigslist and a hand-carved bench from a Christmas tree he cut down from his backyard — for viewers to watch his city symphony-genre flick.
In the one-hour movie, Zang documents a house being torn down in Coquitlam and other modern scenes happening in his concrete/natural jungle.
Finally, in his last room, he positions two images to represent pieces of local history.
Zang, who last showed at Evergreen in 2008 as part of the annual Emerging Talent display for School District 43 Grade 12 art students, said No Name Creek took about 18 months to complete.
And he hopes viewers will understand his version of Coquitlam’s idiosyncratic personality: one in which there are identity and cultural crises as the city struggles to move into its modern suburb status — with plenty of juxtapositions laid bare.
• No Name Creek runs at the Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam) until April 24.
