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Over the past seven years, 58 W. Hastings has been many things: a vacant lot, a tent city, an open-air market, a safe drug use site.
Today, the site is shielded by a covered walkway common to large construction sites, as a social housing and health-care building rises from the empty lot.
Along this long expanse of plywood, people in the Downtown Eastside write messages, over and over again. Some of the messages commemorate friendships and romantic relationships, while others mourn the loss of friends and loved ones to the toxic drug crisis.
Artist Quin Martins has taken one of these graffiti memorials as the title of his exhibition of photographs, collected objects and artworks and recreated lost object posters.
Martins says he doesn’t know who’s behind the graffiti “All of my friends are dead,” which he’s found in multiple spots around the Downtown Eastside. But the phrase expresses the overwhelming sense of loss to people who have lost dozens of friends and acquaintances over the past decade.
“The title’s not meant to be autobiographical — of course I’ve lost many friends to the epidemic — but it’s more talking about the common experience people are currently facing,” Martins said.
It’s common to find graffiti memorials throughout the Downtown Eastside, the epicentre of the toxic drug crisis and a place where people often leave messages on walls as a way of communicating with each other.
James Hardy, an artist known by the name Smokey Devil, has left dozens of memorials and warnings about the danger of the illicit drug supply throughout the neighbourhood. But graffiti memorials in the neighbourhood range from large art pieces to simply writing a loved one’s name with a Sharpie on a wall.
Martins says he views Downtown Eastside graffiti as a form of activism, and he says he views efforts to clear away the graffiti — like the city’s recent “beautification day” where councillors photographed themselves painting a wall grey — as a form of gentrification.
Martins’ exhibit also includes collected items and artwork, and recreations of posters pleading for the return of lost objects. Martins says proposed changes to medical assistance in dying, or MAID legislation, as well as housing insecurity are also explored in the artwork, but the main theme is “loss and how we deal with loss.”
All My Friends Are Dead can be found at Bothkinds Project Space at 1-140 E. Cordova St. until Saturday. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
Read more: Rights + Justice, Art
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