Hummingbird Spirits: Strength and Resilience

Based on the Hummingbird Spirits printmaking initiative originated by UBC Okanagan Gallery Director and Assistant Professor in Visual Arts Tania Willard, Hummingbird Spirits: Strength and Resilience explores a vast catalog of linocut prints all featuring a hummingbird motif. Each original linocut print was produced during the previous two year annual run of the ongoing Hummingbird Spirits project.

Hummingbird Spirits: Strength and Resilience

February 29 to April 22, 2024, Rotary Centre for the Arts

UBC Okanagan students, faculty and the general public created the hummingbird prints to honour the children (little spirits) who never came home and remember the unmarked graves at residential schools across Canada. Their designs were printed onto vibrant orange flags and previously displayed at the UBC Okanagan campus courtyard during National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. 

Hummingbird Spirits: Strength and Resilience is produced in partnership with the Rotary Centre for the Arts in anticipation of Opera Kelowna’s new production Wreckonciliation. The ongoing hummingbird flag project is a collaboration between UBC Okanagan Gallery, the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, and the project’s originator Tania Willard.

Workshops were held in September 2022 and September 2023 to create and print the flags that were then installed on the UBC Okanagan campus for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Below is a list of participants from both years.