By Cara McKenna

Two bright murals are plastered across the side of a new affordable housing building in Vancouver. They are eye-catching, but feature one detail that would likely only be recognized by a select few – Klahoose weavings.

“There’s a weave embedded at the bottom, and that’s from looking at the weavings of my great grandmother and her sisters,” explained artist Bracken Hanuse-Corlett.

He hails from the nations at Klahoose (Cortes Island) and Wuikinuxv (Rivers Inlet), but grew up on the Sunshine Coast and now lives in Vancouver. When he was trained as an artist, he learned Northwest Coast styles. But lately he’s been looking more at Coast Salish art, specifically from Klahoose.

The same two works that Hanuse-Corlett created for the housing building on Main and Terminal in Vancouver were also displayed in print form at the opening of a recent Indigenous film festival in the city called ‘Beyond 150 Years: An Acknowledgement of Cinematic Territory’ on March 5.

Hanuse-Corlett is involved because, while he creates traditional visual art, he also dabbles in film, writing, digital media, theatre and more. At the festival, he also showed projections alongside music created by his cousin.

He has never specialized in one medium, so about five years ago he began using the word ‘Wuuhlu’ to describe his work. It is a Wuikinuxv word that means  ‘to fuse together’.

“I’m always crossing disciplines,” he said. “I used to keep them separate and at one point I tried to fuse everything into one practice. It’s a process that has failures, and high points and low points, because they don’t always go together nicely.”

His varied work has been seen on bus stop posters for the city during its year of reconciliation and was displayed during this year’s Talking Stick festival. Most recently, he was involved in an Indigenous theatre project called šxwʔam’ ət (home).

He said that although in some ways an interest for Indigenous art is growing, it still makes many people uncomfortable.

“With my art, I try to create an aesthetic that’s inviting for a lot of people Then, in my artist statement, I’ll say things that are a bit more political that will create dialogue. It’s a bit of a tactic sometimes.”

Hanuse-Corlett has strong convictions that at times have hurt him financially as an artist. He has avoided the commercial gallery and tourist scene in order to have control over his own story, but he is now able to create art full-time regardless.

“In 2011, I was landscaping mainly, for money, and I was still making art, but I realized that I’d do landscaping and I’d come home and be totally drained and not want to work on anything,” he said. “So I made the choice to completely drop that job and just focus on art. For the first month I made $50. Now I have steady work.”