Karen Zalamea: Every Surface Is a Shrine
March 7 – May 24, 2026
About The Exhibition
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts is pleased to present Every Surface Is a Shrine, which brings together a selection of photo-based works by Karen Zalamea that traces the shifting boundaries between material, memory and place. Rooted in a critical exploration of photography’s expanded possibilities, Zalamea’s practice reimagines the medium not only as an image-making tool but as a methodology of care, labour and cultural inquiry.
Image: Karen Zalamea, Sunken Garden (Chico) (detail), 2025, inkjet print on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist.
This exhibition is part of the 2026 Capture Photography Festival Selected Exhibition Program.
About The Artist
Karen Zalamea is a visual artist whose photographic practice critically considers the medium’s methodologies and materials to attend to issues of memory, inheritance, place and identity.
She is the recipient of the 2025 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award for Photography from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, and the 2023 Prefix Prize from the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions and as public art projects across Canada and internationally. Zalamea holds an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver.
She was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, by immigrant parents from the Philippines, and now resides in Burnaby, on the ancestral and unceded homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.
The artist acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.
