Anvil Centre Public Art

I LOVE public art and New West has more than its fair share of it.

This is one that I'd missed, even though it's been in place for 6 months on the outside of the Anvil Centre: https://imgur.com/a/u142dWA

**Rebecca Bair
Curl Mapped, 2023**
(b. 1995, Toronto, ON, Canada;
lives and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada)
Anvil Centre Public Art Project
April 2023 - March 2024
Curated by Emmy Lee Wall, Capture Photography Festival

Commissioned by the City of New Westminster, this temporary public art installation is presented in partnership with Capture Photography Festival

Situated on the façade of the Anvil Centre in New Westminster, Rebecca Bair's site-specific installation, Curl Mapped, tackles the complex, colonial history of archives to represent that which is absent: traces of Black settlers in this region. Bair spent significant time in the city archives poring over the leather-bound ledgers, reading the handwritten notes, and examining the photographs therein only to discover a gap - what she describes as "a ghost in the space." In Curl Mapped, Bair interrupts parts of the map with curly tendrils of hair, which for her, is symbolic of heritage. and cultural care. As these coils reach toward one another, attempting to close the gap in the map, they suggest the subjective nature of maps while gesturing to the need to acknowledge and repair this lack of representation.