BY ELIZABETH NOLAN
For Salt Spring Arts Council
The Salt Spring Arts Council invites artists and viewers alike to expand their perception of how digital and natural realities relate with the 2026 Spring Art Show.
Digital Ecologies: Bridging Nature and Technology is a dynamic group exhibition running April 10 to 26 at Mahon Hall. Featuring a diverse roster of artists working across traditional, digital and interdisciplinary practices, the exhibition challenges the perceived divide between the natural world and technological systems while signalling an exciting new direction for the Gulf Islands art community. The show is anchored by IM4 Media Lab’s extended reality mural Thunderbird Dreams, an intergenerational project uniting Indigenous youth, elders, artists and technologists in a shared exploration of care, sustainability, unity and kinship.
Digital Ecologies: Bridging Nature and Technology runs daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The opening reception is on Friday, April 10 from 6 to 9 p.m.
Curated by Rafael Katigbak, Digital Ecologies allows audiences to reconsider the relationship between nature and technology — not as opposing forces, but as interconnected systems that shape contemporary life. Through immersive installations, generative works and hybrid media approaches, the exhibition highlights how local and regional artists are navigating and redefining this complex terrain.
“Nature and technology are too often treated as opposites — as if choosing one means turning your back on the other,” Katigbak states in his curator’s statement. “What if these two worlds have more in common than we assume? What if, looked at closely enough, the patterns of one begin to mirror the other — and what if art is one of the best tools we have for exploring the space between them?”
With extensive experience curating international digital art exhibitions through his work with Refraction — where he has connected over 1,500 global artists with emerging technologies — Katigbak brings significant expertise to the project. He also draws on deep connections within the Salt Spring Island arts community to create a unique exhibition.
“We are thrilled to bring this cutting-edge realm of the digital canvas to our community,” said Bronwen Duncan, executive director of the Salt Spring Arts Council. “Unlike a traditional visual art show, visitors will not only see something new, but with the added multi-sensory experience of sound or touch, become deeply immersed within the thought-provoking message of each art piece.”
Participating artists include featured guests IM4 Media Lab from Vancouver, and Gulf Islands-based creators Anna Gustafson, Annika Hagen, Ben Frey, Brandon Stephenson, Leo Chan and Matt Robertson, Meredith Bates and Mena El Shazly, Pravin Pillay, Sara Gold and Veronica Classen. Their works span a wide range of media and approaches — from animatronic sculpture and textile-based practices to video, generative systems and collaborative ecological technologies.
Some artists, such as 2025 Salt Spring National Art Prize winner Gustafson, engage digital tools for the first time, finding that new tools open unexpected ways of seeing. Others use technical expertise to deliver a complex perspective.
“There is no single answer in this exhibition, and that is the point,” Katigbak notes. “The diversity of voices, mediums and approaches is itself the argument — that this is not a problem to be solved, but a tension to be lived with.”
In addition to the exhibition, visitors can engage with a series of public programs, including curator tours, an artist panel discussion and a celebratory multimedia show on the evening of April 25. The 2026 Spring Art Show also features a youth exhibit, Interface, coordinated through the Arts Council’s Artist in the Class program, that highlights emerging perspectives on digital and creative practice.
Katigbak reflects, “My hope is that visitors leave not with answers, but with better questions — about what they notice in the natural world around them, about their own relationship with technology, and about what becomes possible when we stop treating these two worlds as enemies and start letting them speak to each other.”