qiqéyt Pattullo Bridge, New Westminster from the series Sites and Place Names Vancouver, 1990-2015, chromogenic prints, edition 3/3. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2022. Photo: courtesy the artist
xepxápaýay “cedar tree(s)” from the series Sites and Place Names Vancouver, 1990-2015, chromogenic prints, edition 3/3. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2022. Photo: courtesy the artist
Christos Dikeakos’ artistic practice has played an important role in the development of conceptual photography in Vancouver since the late 1960s. His photographic series, Sites and Place Names, created in the 1980s and 1990s, was shot in Vancouver, Saskatoon, Athens, Thessaloniki, and Berlin, and considers the palimpsestic nature of memories, histories, and nomenclature within contemporary urban habitations.
Sites and Place Names Vancouver, 1990—2015 comprises a series of 43 large-format chromogenic prints, each picturing an abandoned, overlooked, or seemingly innocuous urban and/or industrial landscape from in and around the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Each photograph is overlaid with floating texts stating the locations’ place names and important flora and fauna in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim, and English, which the artist gathered over the course of extensive conversations with Indigenous colleagues, friends, and Elders.
With the seeming disjunction between the image and text, Dikeakos surfaces the violent erasures enacted upon these unceded Indigenous territories. The artist challenges the colonial viewpoint that these modern urban locations are non-Indigenous, emphasizing rich and intricate ecosystems, histories, and land use concealed within seemingly ordinary places. In so doing, the artist also critiques the presumed veracity of the photograph.
Christos Dikeakos (b. 1946, Thessaloniki, Greece) is an established conceptual photographer whose work often explores the urban environment, particularly Vancouver’s, and the social and natural histories that are tied to place, community, and politics. Dikeakos is well known for his large-format images.
As a child, Dikeakos emigrated from Greece to Vancouver, British Columbia with his family in 1956. In 1970, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. Throughout his over 50-year career as an artist, Dikeakos has influenced significant movements in the Vancouver art scene, specifically the formation of the “school” of Vancouver Photoconceptualism. In his work, he consistently explores local histories, the conditions of modernity and the socio-economic relations of specific places.
Dikeakos has participated in more than 40 group exhibitions and over 20 solo domestic and international exhibitions in venues including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Kelowna Art Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), Mezzanine Gallery (Halifax), Epideda Gallery (Athens, Greece), and the Canadian Cultural Centre (Rome, Italy). Dikeakos’ work is held in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Vancouver Art Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Market Gallery (Toronto), MOMus Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, and the Utah Museum of Fine Art (Salt Lake City, USA).
Dikeakos lives and works in Vancouver.