Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change
May 14, 2026–January 10, 2027
Installation view of Teresita Fernández, Island Universe 2, 2023, charcoal, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Acquisition Fund, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London
As the environmental crisis accelerates, artists around the world are responding with urgency, insight and vision. Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change is the first major exhibition in Canada to examine the intersection of the climate crisis and contemporary art on a global scale.
Featuring works from the past 25 years, this exhibition underscores the urgency and relevance of sustainability and the environment as defining issues of our time. More than 35 works across a range of media—from large-scale video installations to living sculptures—invite viewers to confront pressing questions about our shared future on this planet.
Presented across multiple floors, Future Geographies includes a newly commissioned work by Jeffrey Gibson and marks the first time several artists are exhibiting in Vancouver, including Teresita Fernández, Josh Kline, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Jean Shin and Clarissa Tossin. The exhibition also features major works by BC–based artists such as Brian Jungen, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun, connecting global issues with local specificity. Together, the works in this exhibition invite dialogue and create space for imagining.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Vancouver Art Gallery is partnering with the University of British Columbia Climate Action Lab to create unique platforms for cross disciplinary dialogue. After its presentation at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Future Geographies will travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Future Geographies will continue on the Gallery’s 4th Floor with the immersive installation SANCTUARY: The Ancient Forest Experience, by Dr. T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, Damien Gillis and Olivier Leroux, and a presentation of cedar works by local artists, curated by Dr. Wyss.
A public artwork by Cannupa Hanska Luger will be featured on a billboard on 1611 E Hastings Street (near Commercial Drive) and is a collaboration with Capture Photography Festival.
EXHIBITION PARTNERS
Canada’s National Observer
The Gallery has partnered with Canada’s National Observer, a climate journalism publication, to present Future Geographies online, extending the exhibition to audiences worldwide. The site will feature original essays and videos exploring the artists and their work.
Created by Linda Solomon Wood, Founder and Publisher of Canada’s National Observer, and Eva Respini, the exhibition’s curator, this collaboration unites two Vancouver–based institutions around a central question posed by the artworks themselves and essential to all of us.
University of British Columbia Climate Action Lab
The Gallery has partnered with the University of British Columbia’s Climate Action Lab. Climate Action Lab students researched sustainable approaches to exhibition-making by scripting and producing videos that connect artworks on view to climate science and action. These videos—featured within the exhibition space itself—include information on resources for visitors who wish to get involved locally. This partnership between more than forty UBC undergraduate students from all different disciplines is led by Dr. Sara Harris, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and Eva Respini, the exhibition’s curator.
Further Collaboration and Research
The Gallery is a participant in Sustainable Arts and Green Ecosystems (SAGE), a local consortium of galleries, museums, theatres and fabricators that promotes sustainable exhibition-making. Our partner in exhibition fabrication, Great Northern Way Scene Shop (GNWS), is committed to eco-conscious operations and provides diversion reports for exhibitions with materials that cannot be repurposed in future exhibitions. Through GNWS, the Gallery collaborates with Urban Jacks, a local company that diverts wood waste from landfills and transforms it into reclaimed lumber.
