About the experience.

Learn more about the creative team and why this upcoming gallery is so relevant today.

Hello! My name is Sarah Mercier, and I am the creator behind this online visual experience. I am a Métis singer, dancer, actor, teacher, and choreographer in the traditional and unceded lands of the territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Also known as Vancouver, British Columbia.

There will be more info and stories to come, but for now, here is a bit of backstory on this project. Vancouver is a beautiful, picturesque, and privileged city in the Pacific Northwest. This city thrives on tourism, film and television, forestry, and financial services. The city is typically alive with festivals, community events, concerts, and celebrations. However, on the other side of this festivity is a darker part of the city. In a ten-block radius on the East side of the city is "ground zero" for most of the issues present in the city. Homelessness, crime, and an opioid crisis are openly visible and participated in here. While it is concentrated in these areas, these shifts are present in the quiet and more hidden parts of the city and its people. Areas that get shadowed in the joyfulness and hustle and bustle of city life. Devastating inflation, unaffordable housing, a lack of vacancy, and a dramatic rise in the cost of living as a whole. Vancouverites have been forced to find alternate ways of living and surviving.

There is hope, though. Not all is lost for this loved city. There are still many moments of community, grace, mercy, love, and steadfast faith in the midst of these challenges.

This project is going to bring to light these glimmers of truth. The audience will have an opportunity to freely scroll through a gallery. Film photos that show these seemingly dark moments, and frames of life. Still, lost, images. Alongside these will be hymns. Traditional and poignant songs of love, joy, peace, grace, mercy, and hope. Paired together to shift perspective.

From still, to breathing. From dark to light. From lost to found.