COQUITLAM, CANADA

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Arni Haraldsson, "Johnston Heights, Coquitlam, BC," 1990

C-print, 61 x 91.5 cm

Coquitlam, Canada presents a story of Coquitlam, Canada told through art, artifacts and text. As viewers move through a collection of evocative and provocative images by local and national artists.

In Canada’s Centennial year, the population of the Coquitlam numbered about 41,000 and in 1976 Coquitlam was home to 55,500 souls. When the ECC opened its doors twenty years later in 1996, the population of Coquitlam was 102,000 with the Tri-Cities population at 171,000. By Canada’s sesquicentennial, Coquitlam is home to just under 150,000 people with just under 250,000 people living in the Tri-Cities.

A starting point for this exhibition is the fact that Coquitlam has multiple histories that inform and describe how it got to where it is today. Given the population growth and development patterns in the city, these histories start at different points in time and place. They intertwine with one another to create numerous divergent potential historical trajectories. Moreover, these local histories of intersect with, inform and are in their turn informed by regional, national and global art, technological, social, cultural, political and economic histories. For example, the city has been shaped by large forces – the rapid expansion of suburban development – but it has also developed in contradiction to conflicting forces. For example, just six years after the global financial and energy crises in 1973 the Coquitlam Centre opened with 4,200 parking stalls. An identifying question around which this exhibition has been developed is: “How do you tell a history of “becomingness” – Coquitlam’s becomingness; Canada’s becomingness – when people look to history for moments that are fixed in time?

THE EXHIBIT Includes work by William Eakin and Arni Haraldsson among others. Materials from the Coquitlam Archives.