Published 2025
Author: Kay Slater
Translation and description drafts provided by chatGPT 4.0
Text to speech translation uses the Speechify voice library.

Introduction to alternative text catalogue:

The alternative text catalogue project was created by the staff and contractors on the Accessibility Committee at Grunt Gallery. Our approach to alternative text is one of creative access, straddling the line between information and function. We are all artists, and while we try to minimize subjective language, we are working to provide a catalogue that creates an enjoyable experience for our non-visual audience and those better served by text!

Creative Access Descriptions:

Cover (front):

(Instruction – Describe cover)
The cover page is an aged earthy orange colour. Centered on the page, framed with a black border, is a photograph of the interior of a fishing tent. Surrounding the bordered image are exhibition details: ‘grunt gallery, December 5th, 2024 to February 1st, 2025’ at the top and Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, Nee’Shah | Our House at the bottom. The image is taken from just outside the entrance, looking inward. The tent is made of off-white, canvas-like material, showing signs of wear, with frayed edges and patches scattered across the surface. The entrance is partially unzipped and tied back by a red and black woven ribbon, revealing the back wall where a large, white moose hide hangs on the back wall, featuring a series of small holes and a beaded fringe. The tent is supported by an exposed black plastic frame.

Cover (back):

This page lists image credits for Dennis Ha’s photos used in the catalogue, all of which are installation views of the show at grunt gallery.

Cover inside:

The cover’s inside (front and back) pages are a single image that spans the folded double-spread, interrupted by the inner catalogue’s pages. The image is a view of the gallery from the south side, looking north.

The front inside cover displays the left half of the image, featuring the fishing tent set up inside the gallery. The letters “W.R.F.N.” are spray-painted on the front flap. In the background, large windows reveal the gallery’s exterior, showing a street lined with leafless trees and a glass door with a red neon sign above it.

The right half of the image is presented on the back inside cover. The white tent continues across the page, extending toward a deep nighttime-blue gallery wall. On the south—facing exterior side, a line of evenly spaced, crisscrossing stitches securing canvas sections is visible. Overhead track lighting illuminates the scene, casting shadows on the tent’s surface.

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Page 1:

The page is all text. The footer shows the grunt gallery logo (the word grunt in lower case in white on a black painted brushstroke) above a line of gallery and exhibition funders. They are acknowledged in the text credits.

The interior pages are thinner than the cover but still feel thicker than photocopy paper.

The credits read

grunt gallery
Nee’ Shah | Our House
Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé
116 – 350 East 2nd Avenue
Vancouver, BC Canada
V5T 4R8
grunt.ca
Curator: Whess Harman
Writers: Whess Harman and jaye simpson (jaye’s name is all lowercase).
Design: Victoria Lum
Copy Editor: Katrina Orlowski
Photography: Dennis Ha
Printed in Canada by Mitchell Press
Edition of 200
All Rights Reserved. Publication copyright 2025 grunt gallery. Artwork copyright 2025 the artists. Text copyright 2025 the authors. All images courtesy of the artists.

Copyright grunt gallery, the writers and the artists. Content from this book cannot be reproduced without express permission from the publisher.

grunt gallery gratefully acknowledges support from The Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, The Canada Council for the Arts, The British Columbia Arts Council, The City of Vancouver, the Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Vancouver Foundation.

Page 2 and 3:

The double-page image shows the back wall of the fishing tent as seen from just inside the entrance.

At the center of the back wall, a white moose hide is stretched and suspended by moose rawhide ties, forming a natural, irregular shape. The hide has several small holes and a delicate, beaded fringe that dangles along its lower edge. The fringe consists of moose backstrap sinew strung with dark Silverberry Seeds.

Dark leather patches with beaded messages are scattered across the canvas walls surrounding the moosehide. These patches are rectangular, positioned at varying heights, and sewn directly onto the canvas. Above the moosehide, a circular, intricately beaded patch is affixed near the tent’s peak.

The lower edge of the wall transitions into frayed canvas fringe—a remnant of the original fishing tent’s base. The rest of the flooring has been removed, leaving only this section as a trace of the tent’s previous function.

Page 4:

An aged earthy orange page, the same colour as the cover, features a single black-bordered photograph. The image is a close-up of a section of the fishing tent’s interior fabric wall.

On the left side of the image, a dark blue square patch is sewn onto the off-white canvas. The patch has beadwork forming the text: “Where you at? Have you seen them lately?” The lettering is in lime-coloured beads, and the patch is edged with a double row of small blue and gold beads.

To the right of the patch, strands of thin sinew dangle from the lower edge of a stretched moosehide. Small, dark Silverberry Seeds are threaded onto the sinew, forming a scattered pattern as they descend.

Page 5:

A white page titled “Whess Harman, Curator’s Introduction.” The text is a black sans serif, and the title is in italics.

Page 6 and 7:

The essay begins on page 6 in two columns and continues until page 7, when it concludes in one paragraph and one column.

The essay reads:
One of the questions we spend a lot of time on while reviewing exhibition proposals during our open call is why grunt, why this project here and now? For some shows this is easier to decipher than others but it is always the hope that the artist has some of their own reasoning as well for wanting to engage with our space. Teresa was very clear in her proposal about why grunt; her proposal was honest and thoughtful in thinking through the complexity of grief when losing loved ones through houselessness and substance use, while also being mindful of what this conversation means in a place like so-called Vancouver; it’s been nine years since the declaration of a public health emergency regarding overdose deaths in our communities, with the Downtown Eastside not being the only place that this crisis is occurring, but certainly an area which receives the ire of public and political attention for it.

Teresa is frank in stating that she is not someone who experiences substance use disorder and positions herself as a witness. This is not to suggest passivity. In many Indigenous cultures, both hers and mine, being a witness is not only a role given to someone trusted but serves as a crucial function in many of our cultural practices. To mark something as needing a witness(ing) is to ascribe to it an importance and to officiate a place within communal memory.

Describer’s note: Witnessing is written with the i-n-g within brackets, so it reads both witness and witnessing.

I’ve always liked this method; not everyone is gifted with such a long and detailed memory to remember things equally, so signifying certain moments and then assigning the act of witnessing seems like a sensible way to organize collective memory. Being called to witness is not especially about prestige or personal honour; it is a service to your community and recognized as such. Remember what happened, who was there, what we were gathered for. Remember it in detail, and tell the story well when called upon to do so.

The privileges of working in institutions and the resources it can offer will not insulate you against loss, not if you’re paying attention. In this way, the “why grunt?” question is answered through knowing our community; many of us have lost loved ones in our families and arts communities to both houselessness and overdoses. grunt has been active for the last 40 years and invariably this means that it’s been called upon to hold and witness the grief and struggles of our communities over time. Grief is something that is deeply susceptible to becoming a private and individualized experience, but in this space, has often been felt and supported collectively.

The opening for this exhibition happened on Dec 5, coincidentally on the anniversary of the death of a very dear friend of mine, Lydia Sng. I did consider moving the opening, to grieve in private. So much of how we keep the dead alive is imagining what they might say and this year, what I was hearing was this friend telling me to stop holding back on living my life because I miss them so much. I’ll still hold myself back sometimes, it’s in my nature, but if there was ever a work that I would feel okay still showing up for, it was this one. Nee’Shah is something that every one who visits it will have a different relationship with depending on their experiences with losing loved ones, but what is interesting to me about it is that it’s a work that deliberately and gently gathers people together to connect them back to those personal relationships, to speak the names and tell the stories of those who’ve passed and to do so from a place of compassion and love so that there is still space for them to live alongside us.

Page 8 to 9:

The double-page image shows the left side of the south wall or the right of the entrance. The primary focus of this image is a large, oiled piece of Lake Trout Skin suspended at three corners in a Y-shaped configuration by firm, dried rawhide. The fish leather is textured with intricate and overlapping rows of scales. It is darker along the central spine and gradually lightens toward the edges. The leather has a few small holes where the skin has broken or separated, but it remains largely intact.
To the right of the fish leather, a vertical column of fabric shapes is sewn onto the canvas. The column features a pattern of black circles, each marked with a central dot, alongside a row of red half-moon shapes. Beyond this embroidery, two canvas sections are lashed with a red-flecked outdoor camping cord, crisscrossing through metal grommets. The excess cord is coiled around the horizontal cross beams of black ABS pipe, reinforcing the lightweight tent frame.

Page 10:

An aged earthy orange page, the same colour as the cover, features a single black-bordered photograph. The image is a close-up of the lower corner of the fishing tent’s interior, where the canvas wall stretches over the black ABS pipe frame.

Partially obscured by the vertical tent post, a dark fabric patch is sewn onto the off-white canvas. Beaded in gold thread, the text reads:
“I miss you every day. Your sister has passed, and I’m having so much difficulty. I can’t believe I’ve lost you both. I miss you so much. She has been missing you. I don’t think she was ever the same after you passed. I love you both so much.”

To the right of the large patch, a smaller rectangular repair patch is affixed to the wall. The frayed bottom edge of the tent wall extends downward, its loose threads hanging unevenly. A red-flecked camping cord, used to reinforce the structure, is looped around the black pipe frame.

Page 11:

A white page titled jaye simpson, A Song Sung // A Melody Returned. The text is a black sans serif, the author’s name is all lowercase letters and the title is in italics, with the two slashes marking a line break.

Page 12 to Page 15:

The essay is laid out in 2 columns across page 12, interrupted by a page of images for page 13, and continues until page 15.

Page 13 again has an aged earthy orange-coloured background, the same colour as the cover, which features two black-bordered photographs stacked on top of each other.

The top photograph captures a modified section of the fishing tent’s sloping roof, where a smoke hole has been embellished by the artist. A rectangular piece of fabric with a vivid geometric pattern with autumn leaf-red, a fruity-blue, and lemon-peel yellow is sewn around the opening with thick, textured stitches in contrasting colours. Below this section, along the roof’s seam, a small rectangular hide patch is affixed. This patch features a floral beadwork design and is of special significance—it is the last beaded piece created by the artist’s grandmother, Nelnah Bessie John.

The bottom photograph is a close-up of an intricate circular beaded patch sewn onto a vertical piece of soft leather. The densely beaded design features a rich golden background, with branching shapes outlined in black and filled with shimmering blue and silver beads. Small clusters of bright coloured beadwork emerge from the lower right section of the circle. A thin, multicoloured beaded border surrounds the entire patch. The leather holding the patch is stitched onto the tent canvas using wide, evenly spaced sinew ties.

The essay reads:
There’s a scraping sound, friction of blade against hide. the pulling of skin. A consistent thrum of movement, a ritual and prayer on the backdrop of canvas and sinew. Upon walking in, I am awash in the sensory experience of Nee’Shah | Our House by Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé. My breath hitches and my shoulders sag in, my eyes burn with an overwhelming sense of grief and witnessing. You can smell the tanned hide, see the way the light is dampened by the canvas and the beadwork glints light a thousand small pinpricks of light. As if glowing from behind, peering inwards.

I immediately think about my mother. Julie-Ann Simpson. I think about my Auntie Olga, who calls me up and updates me on the ways in which our family in the Downtown Eastside is still here but sometimes we lose someone. I lost my mother more than a decade ago and I would like to wish that things were different when it comes to our reality. The positionality of Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé’s work in proximity to the Downtown Eastside is captivating and a stark reminder of the ways in which our grief of substance use related death impacts so many of us, especially so on these unceded territories.

I’m at work. In a small gallery on Pender Street and I see folks much alike to me, on their bodies is the familiar black container with a white cross. I see the numbers ebb and flow, a tide of confusion and fury as Ken Sim and David Eby enact anti-drug laws that kill more and more of our kin across the City and Province. I think about my friends in the DTES, how I bump into Jaz outside the West Pub, they call me a little bitch and ask if I want a sip of whiskey from their flask. It’s cold, the very air in my lungs curls around in concentric waves. As I think about this, I hear a wet noise in Nee’Shah, a consistent patterned noise. I turn to Teresa and ask her. The auditory accompaniment is the process of tanning a hide, the scraping and splashing and the auditory ends with the rumble of a car ripping up a driveway. It’s her grandparent coming to visit.

I stand in awe, my friends nearby and I’m reflecting on how last year Kendell and I marched with DULF, on how my community of harm reduction friends zip around, looking for our friends and community members. I’m awash in the ways it’s us, folks with direct experiences with the toxic drug supply creating these weavings and patterns of care. Continental Breakfast is shouting into the microphone at a queer party to test your supply and not use alone, a harm reduction Buddy at the party is testing someone’s bag for them at the station and teaching someone how to use a safe snorting kit. I’m in a sea of bodies so much like mine and so different, Indigenous and queer and trans and varying in experience and life and so close to the place that so many cast downturned looks at. I could write a thousand love poems to the Downtown Eastside, and maybe I will.

( Describer’s note: DULF is written in all caps and stands for Drug User Liberation Front. Continental Breakfast is a person and performer in Vancouver).

Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé accomplishes something so phenomenal with this work, a resounding statement that art is political, and devastatingly important to the work that’s to come, and to the work that has already been done. By fusing the personal journey and allowing a wider audience to be a part of this witnessing, it feels in part ceremonial and also a call for a better tomorrow. When I walked out of the exhibition, it felt like my head was breaching the cold waters of English Bay, the air hurting my lungs and my face stinging, my muscles on fire. Visceral and haunting, like part of me was fighting to come back up, as if witnessing such a rich exploration of grief and locational experience was needed deep in my spirit. When I reflect on my grief of overdoses and toxic supply, I feel overwhelmed, as if I couldn’t fathom it, this insurmountable ocean I have been familiar with since 2000, when I lost my stepfather. The Province of British Columbia seems to be a battleground of pseudo progressive and liberation talking point parties and the farcical cartoon villain acting conservative parties. A place where safe supply has become a battle ground on moral public purview instead of granting our own neighbours, our fellow humans the grace and humanity we all should be given at a base level.

I am a person full of grief, rife with the weight of loss and many times I allow this well of hurt to manifest into rage, rage that pushes my body outside onto the frontlines, I find myself walking side by side with Whess, with Kendell, with Meenakshi, with Dean, with Jaz. I’m mad at a Metis Youth Shelter in Kamloops that evicts youth in and from care if they are found with substances, forcing them into the streets, even if it’s the dead of winter. I think about how many housing organizations do this to folks across the Province, forcing the many Indigenous folks accessing these programs to lose housing and safety. Kendall Yan once said “Everyone has an inalienable right to safe supply”, and I concur, there is something so cruel and genocidal about denying someone safety, especially when the weight of grief and intergenerational trauma so often leads so many of us into self medicating and self soothing by many means. Who is to judge how one tries to find reprieve in this storm of moral superiority that the governing bodies seem to be manufacturing at the expense of our very lives?

I guess what I am trying to say here is that I still don’t know what to do with my grief, but when spending some time in Nee’Shah | Our House by Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, there was a calm and airlessness about it. Like I was suspended in the heart and song that Teresa so graciously shares with us. I feel more than just the space it takes, but the fingerprints of many lives and the whispers of many stories, a love letter to another, a song sung too early, but with a melody unlike any I have ever heard until now. I mean, I’ve heard the chorus, a few voices in different media, but now it feels cacophonous, the expression of grief and ceremony, this manifestation of wanting, wanting more than this despondent and callous disregard from our own service providers and the “care” system.

Instead of losing faith, I will close my eyes and know, truly that there are many in their craft and heart who refuse to allow grief to silence them, rather to fuse sinew to bone again, extend muscle and build up the body: a song will be sung and a cacophonous melody returned.
Page 16 and 17:
This double-page image shows the south-facing exterior of the tent, as if viewed after entering and stepping left to face the outside of the structure. The weathered canvas walls reveal the tent’s age and history, with visible discoloration, stains, and areas of wear. The tent’s original floor has almost entirely disintegrated, leaving behind strips of hanging threads and loose patches that expose the black ABS plastic frame along the bottom edge.

The reverse side of embroidered geometric shapes, including a large circular design with a cross at its centre and a column of embroidered circles, shows through as stitched outlines or shadows against the exterior canvas. Small square and rectangular repair patches are sewn onto the surface at varying heights. The right edge of the tent is decorated with tidy, red-threaded stitches. On top of the tent’s sloping roof, the embroidered smoke hole is visible, aligning with its detailed decoration inside.

Overhead track lighting illuminates the scene, casting additional shadows that accentuate the uneven texture of the distressed canvas. The backdrop of the deep blue gallery wall starkly contrasts the tent’s muted, aged fabric.

Page 18:

A white page with text. Artist’s name is bolded. The text on this page is first written in Upper Tanana. The text has not been included in this alternative text catalogue to respect current assistive technology limitations and to respect the Indigenous text such that it is not misunderstood or misrepresented. It is also included in English. The English text reads:

Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé is a proud Niisüü Member of White River First Nation from Beaver Creek, Yukon and Alaska. She currently resides on Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ Territories in Victoria, British Columbia, although she travels home to the Yukon as often as she can. She is an Upper Tanana, Frisian, and French visual artist and curator. Her visual arts practice is invested in the awakening of sleeping materials and the reanimation of found objects that are rooted in understandings of identity. She has recently been exploring themes of grief, loss, family, community, and relationships in her installation works.

( Describer’s note: Niisüü is written capital N, lowercase I-I-S, U-U each with a pair of dots above their letters. W̱SÁNEĆ is written in all capital letters, unlined W-S-A with a rising accent above the A, N-E-C with a rising accent above the C ).

“A special tsin’’įį choh (big thank you) to everyone that has stood by my side as I grieve the recent passings of my Grandma Marilyn John, Brother Stewart Chassé, Uncle Patrick Johnny, Uncle Peter van der Meer, and Cousin Duncan Stephen.

( Describer’s note: A big thank you is written t-s-i-n apostrophe approstrophe j-j c-h-o-h ).

I have been blessed with an abundance of teachers throughout my life, who share with me teachings, memories, stories, and language. This journey would not have been possible without contributors and supporters. Tsin’įį choh (big thank you) to my Ancestors, my family, my friends, my moosehide and fish tanning teachers, my Upper Tanana language teachers, and White River First Nation.”

On the bottom left of the page reads ‘Biographies’.

Page 19:

A white page with text. Author’s name is in all lower case whenever it appears and is bolded. North American Phonetic versions of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh nations have been removed in this text to respect current assistive technology limitations and to respect the Indigenous text such that it is not misunderstood or misrepresented. The bio reads:

jaye simpson (she/they) is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer from the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. simpson is a writer, advocate and activist sharing their knowledge and lived experiences in hope of creating utopia.

she is published in several magazines including Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Magazine: Green, GUTS Magazine, SubTerrain, Grain and Room. They are in four anthologies: Hustling Verse (2019), Love After the End (2020), The Care We Dream Of (2021), and Queer Little Nightmares (2022). Their first poetry collection, it was never going to be okay (Nightwood Ed.) was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award and a 2021 Dayne Ogilvie Prize Finalist while also winning the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English. a body more tolerable, is her second book of published poetry.

she is a displaced Indigenous person resisting, ruminating and residing on Musqueam, Tsleil-waututh and Squamish First Nations territories, colonially known as Vancouver.

Page 20:

An aged earthy orange page, the same colour as the cover, features a single black-bordered photograph. The image is a close-up of a small beaded floral design, stitched onto a soft, rectangular piece of hide. This is the last beadwork created by the artist’s grandmother, Nelnah Bessie John.
At the center of the patch, a round floral motif is embroidered with dense beadwork. The flower consists of looping, interwoven petals in shades of sweet magenta, yellow, and sky blue seed beads. A thin, multicoloured beaded border surrounds the design, creating a contrast against the natural, light-toned hide. The hide is sewn onto the tent’s canvas using yellow thread in a zigzag stitch.
Above the floral patch, a single red-stitched seam runs vertically along the canvas, securing overlapping layers of fabric. To the left of the seam, a cool blue and purple embroidered repair forms a blocky C-shape.

End of alternative text catalogue.

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