Emiliano Sepulveda

Artist Statement 

Full dome of sky / through the fog (signal noon October 1, 2014) emerged out of an ongoing preoccupation with the act of walking as a way of reading the living world. Walking is a way of making the body present to the world and affecting how it senses and is sensed by the world. This work emerged out of an interest in creating a connection with another person in another place. To accomplish this I collaborated with Kerria Gray with a series of walks. Finally Kerria and I arranged to walk to two very different locations on October 1st, 2014 and signal our presence to each other. I walked to the shore of the Burrard Inlet at Crab Park and she walked up to the peak of Mount Fromme. We synchronized our watches and at a precise time we both fired an emergency signal flare into the sky. 

This was a way of collapsing the boundaries between the two different spaces that we were in and turning it into one space. At that moment we were simultaneously together as well as several kilometres apart. Space collapsed and became one point. We signaled our presence to each other and to others, making us present to be sensed by others and by the land. It was a sensuous way of removing the boundaries between the different territories we inhabited while at the same time reinforcing them. 

Bio

Emiliano Sepulveda is an immigrant visual artist of Mexican descent now local to Vancouver. He is fascinated by how the world is encountered through perception, and his work is a constant practice of creating models for understanding and interacting with this world. This process-based practice incorporates simple actions such as walking or kite flying as ritual practice and is heavily informed by photography. For Sepulveda, photography also functions as an uncanny, magical, performative, and sculptural medium. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and is an MFA candidate at Simon Fraser University. He is also a recipient of the SFU Graduate Entrance Award, the Steven Shane Graduate Scholarship, the Elsie Jang Scholarship, and the BC Arts Council Scholarship.

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