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Phytogram Workshop

September 27, 2026 | 11-5pm

Prioritizing Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Artists
In partnership with Full Circle: First Nations Performance

Join SUM gallery for a cameraless Phytogram Workshop, facilitated by KJ Edwards (Kanien’kehá:ka, mixed-settler interdisciplinary artist). Phytograms, first coined by artist Karel Doing, are made by soaking plant material in an eco-friendly developer and placing them directly onto the film. This workshop will teach the participants to mix the developer, and to apply their chosen plants onto 16mm and 35mm B&W film, creating imprints of the plants within the emulsion. Folks will also learn how to fix and splice their film for projection. KJ will demonstrate how to use and load a 16mm projector.

*This workshop does not require camera experience or analogue film experience.

Please fill out the following form to participate in the Phytogram Workshop:

PHYTOGRAM WORKSHOP FORM

This workshop will require a few hours outdoors at a nearby park, a few blocks away from SUM gallery for the making of the phytograms. All other aspects of the workshop will take place indoors at SUM gallery. *In the case of rain we may have to do the workshop indoors. SUM gallery is fully accessible, however transport is not provided to and from the park. The group will be travelling by foot and/or assistive device to and from the offsite location. 

Light snacks and beverages will be provided, however we ask that you please bring your own lunch. There are also several affordable options in the area for pick up.

As this workshop will take the full 6 hours, we ask that folks please arrive a bit early to avoid traffic and other potential delays. Participants will be able to take their phytogram film home with them the same day.

SUM-AiR — Yin Mei

August 17 – September 12, 2026

SUM gallery is pleased to welcome photo-based mixed media artist Yin Mei as our 2026 SUM gallery artist-in-residence (SUM-AiR). From now until September 12 Yin will be taking over the gallery space to work on Conversations with ■■■■■■ (2026), an installation photo project centered around meeting trans members of the community and interviewing them on their experience existing in trans bodies.

This exploration is kept optionally private through the tools of censorship: black bar, redaction, and omission. The participant will have full autonomy to choose what parts will be seen by the public and what will be hidden. The resulting interaction will be made into a physical art installation and be shown in an exhibition at SUM gallery. This installation project aims to allow trans people the agency and power over the presentation of their own stories and the privilege of anonymity where the demand of vulnerability and ‘queer joy’ is not required to be shared and instead kept personal.

Yin Mei (She/Her) (b. 2002, Xi’an, China) is a photo-based mixed-media artist working with photography, digital media, archive, typography, and poetry. Her practice is centred on the exploration of queer Chinese trans identities, trans-fem experiences, and generational trauma in context with the sinophone diaspora. Through both digital and physical manipulation and intervention, she examines how identity is shaped, oppressed, and empowered through cultural histories. Yin Mei creates work that exists in limbo and uncertainty, where tradition and memory are liminal and the past drapes over the present. Her practice is based on reclamation, resistance, and reimagination–taking space from places that oppress. She received her BFA at the University of British Columbia in 2024 and is currently practicing as an emerging artist in the stolen and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, “Vancouver, BC.”