North Vancouver's Polygon Gallery launches Parallelogram, its first-ever online exhibition

North Vancouver's Polygon Gallery has launched Parallelogram, a digital exhibition platform showcasing works by artists who have presented at the gallery in the past. Gallery curator Elliiot Ramsey said the project has been five years in the making.

The platform went live on June 29 and was developed largely with funding from a Canada Council grant that enables arts organizations to build out their digital infrastructure. Ramsey said maintaining a growing digital archive is still a substantial undertaking for the gallery, so it's rolling out the digital exhibitions for only the length of a typical bricks-and-mortar show.

The first exhibition, Interior Infinite Revisited, runs from now until September 20, 2026. The show revisits a major 2021 exhibition called Interior Infinite that Ramsey curated during COVID lockdowns — a time when audiences couldn't travel or gather in person. The original show explored costume and masquerade as radical self-expression against dominant culture, featuring works by artists such as Martine Gutierrez, Charlotte Zhang, and Vivek Shraya.

"When we work with an artist once, that is a relationship, and these conversations keep going," Ramsey said. "It's kind of the soil in which everything else has sort of taken root. So it is really special to revisit it and continue to celebrate these amazing artists who I've been so lucky to collaborate with."

Interior Infinite Revisited features many of the photos, texts, and video-based works from the original, along with brand new works created specifically for Parallelogram — including an interview with the all-Asian drag family House of Rice and a mockumentary by Skeena Reece centred on an Indigenous woman who identifies as a white Australian.

The second online exhibition, Volume 2: Presence, will run from September 21 to December 27 and is an all-Indigenous exhibition featuring works by Deirdre Lee, Jacqueline Morrisseau-Addison, Aaron Rice, Emma Hassencahl-Perley, Tʼuyʼtʼtanat-Cease Wyss, and Jordan Abel. Ramsey said the ultimate shape and form that Parallelogram will take is an ongoing process, but the gallery is excited to share what it has developed with a global audience.