Karen Zalamea: Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas)
2024 – 2025
Karen Zalamea: Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas)
The artist created digital negatives from scans of the botanical illustrations to make cyanotypes: a camera-less photo technique where an object or negative is placed onto a light-sensitized surface, then exposed to daylight to create an image. In this mural-like interpretation, the sunlight has a different role—it instead courses through the vinyl window coverings to create a translucent, stained-glass effect.
Like how Zalamea reconfigures existing botanical illustrations into cyanotypes in Herbarium, the translation of the original cyanotype artwork into the window installation showcases the life cycle of images—continuously replicated and consequently spread. With the artwork reformatted to fit Evergreen’s windows facing Lafarge Lake, the troubled stories that Herbarium tells here mirror the work’s localized context. It offers us a moment to reflect on how colonialist projects and ideals were implemented through the development of Lafarge Lake, which has forever altered local surroundings.
This public art project is part of the 2026 Capture Photography Festival’s Public Art Program.
Images: Karen Zalamea, Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas), 2024-2025, site-specific installation at , exhibition at The Gallery at Evergreen Arts, 2026. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
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.
We acknowledge that Evergreen Cultural Centre Society operates on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem First Nation). We thank the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm who continue to live on these lands and care for them, along with the waters and all that is above and below.
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Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Privacy Policy | A Not-For-Profit Registered Charity (CRA 893668491RR0001) | Design By Spryberry.co
We acknowledge that Evergreen Cultural Centre Society operates on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem First Nation). We thank the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm who continue to live on these lands and care for them, along with the waters and all that is above and below.
Sign up to receive all the latest news and updates from Evergreen Arts.
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Privacy Policy | A Not-For-Profit Registered Charity (CRA 893668491RR0001) | Design By Spryberry.co
We acknowledge that Evergreen Cultural Centre Society operates on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem First Nation). We thank the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm who continue to live on these lands and care for them, along with the waters and all that is above and below.
Sign up to receive all the latest news and updates from Evergreen Arts.
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Privacy Policy | A Not-For-Profit Registered Charity (CRA 893668491RR0001) | Design By Spryberry.co
We acknowledge that Evergreen Cultural Centre Society operates on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem First Nation). We thank the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm who continue to live on these lands and care for them, along with the waters and all that is above and below.
Sign up to receive all the latest news and updates from Evergreen Arts.
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Evergreen Arts
Monday – Saturday | 12 – 5pm
1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam BC, V3B 7Y3
The Gallery at Evergreen Arts
Wednesdays 12 – 5pm
Thursdays + Fridays 12 – 6pm
Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 5p
Privacy Policy | A Not-For-Profit Registered Charity (CRA 893668491RR0001) | Design By Spryberry.co