i LOVE Ken Lum. Amazing piece. Amazing artist.
photo by Bob K. via vancouverisawesome
here’s a neat article i found:
“It’s kind of an underground icon,” he said. “I wouldn’t classify it as graffiti but it is the kind of signifier you’d see appear sporadically on sidewalks in chalk or behind grocery stores. It’s never been formalized or recognized so I thought that was interesting.”
Growing up, Culture Seen remembers seeing the distinctive crucifix form of East Van scrawled on sidewalks and elsewhere around East Vancouver. It was a kind of guerilla action - Lum calls it a rearguard move - to assert territoriality by marginalized Eastsiders.
Lum, who was born and raised on the Eastside, said he talked to someone almost 80 who recalls seeing it as far back as the 1940s and 1950s. But Lum couldn’t discover its actual historic origins such as who started writing it and why.
The crucifix form does have a religious connotation but one that Lum feels is cancelled out by the sacriligious content. In some situations, the phrase would be accompanied by a third word “Rules.”
“There was a double entendre: ‘Rules’ meant ‘You enter the territoryof East Vancouver and you play by our rules.’ There’s also a somewhat different meaning of East Vancouver Rules - that the east side runs the city which isn’t true. It’s a rich symbol.
“It’s that richness that I’d like to believe kept it alive all these decades. I think a lot of people will notice it and talk about it and not just advance public art but also what it means in terms of a bifurcated city.”
Lum said he doesn’t usually submit to public art projects - especially those with an open call.The public art competitions he’s won have occurred after he’s been asked to be on a short list. He applied to Mapping and Marking because he thought his idea fit the guidelines perfectly.
“I also thought that East Vancouver still gets short shrifted,” he said. “It never really gets its due - especially in terms of public art.”
