“Overburden” — Gabriela Escobar Ari, Asinnajaq, Patti Bailey qʷn̓qʷin̓n̓, Randy Lee Cutler, Jim Holyoak and Darren Fleet, Ts_ēmā, Keith Langergraber, Sarah Nance, Tara Nicholson, Carol Wallace

he subtitle for the group exhibition “Overburden” reads as “Geology, Extraction, and Metamorphosis in a Chaotic Age.” Yet, rather than descend into apathy and dread, the show retains a sense of hopefulness and social responsibility. Curated by Genevieve Robertson and Maggie Shirley, the exhibition was shown at the Oxygen Art Centre and the Kootenay Gallery of Art, bringing together 11 artists who question settler-colonial and capitalist perceptions of land as a source from which to profit. The title, “Overburden,” cites the word’s geological definition: the waste rock and soil that lies