At Capture Photography Festival, Wherever You Are depicts home as a warm embrace across time and distance
The mural-scale photo installation by Cree and Métis artist Michelle Sound recalls an East Van childhood and growing Indigenous pride
Michelle Sound’s Wherever You Are, 2026. Photo courtesy of the artist and Ceremonial / Art
Capture Photography Festival presents Michelle Sound’s Wherever You Are at the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation from April 1, 2026, to March 1, 2027
MICHELLE SOUND’S EARLIEST memories of beadwork revolve around her family.
The photographer, who is of Cree and Métis heritage, recalls her mother—a member of the Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation in Treaty 8 territory, Northern Alberta—wearing a fringe choker with her nickname, Chicory, beaded into its design. They would attend powwows together, where they’d buy handmade items like beaded moccasins and fringe earrings. One of Sound’s most treasured accessories as a kid was a pair of pink and baby-blue beaded hair barrettes.
But beadwork wasn’t something she could wear proudly in urban areas. Sound grew up in East Vancouver, near Trout Lake, splitting her elementary-school years between Charles Dickens and Laura Secord and attending high school at Van Tech, which she graduated from in 1995. By that time—two years before the last residential school in Canada closed—the attitude toward Indigenous culture wasn’t welcoming.
“My memories of growing up there in the ’80s and ’90s, you know, was that it was pretty racist,” Sound, who’s now based in Burnaby, tells Stir by Zoom. “We were called slurs a lot, and beadwork was something that I would never have gone to school wearing. None of the other Native kids [did either]—it was not something any of us would have had. It was something you got at powwows or you got from family, and you wore it only around family.
“It’s very different from today,” she remarks. “When you walk around East Van and Commercial Drive and stuff, so many people—even non-Indigenous people—are wearing beadwork and Indigenous designs.”
All those formative memories of beadwork were the inspiration for Sound’s latest photograph, Wherever You Are, which will be on display as part of this year’s Capture Photography Festival. The image shows Cree-Métis artist Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire standing with her back to the camera, braiding a long strand of her dark hair while wearing a beautiful beaded fringe jacket that once belonged to her great-grandfather, Magloire Cardinal of Lac La Biche, Alberta. The buckskin garment, which Cardinal Cire borrowed from her uncle for the shoot, is adorned with a row of beadwork flowers along its back panel and arm cuffs, in vibrant shades of green, orange, red, pink, and blue.
Michelle Sound. Photo by Sweetmoon Photography
At Capture, a large-scale version of Wherever You Are will adhere to the facade of the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation downtown, with the grid lines of the building’s glass panes cutting across the image, giving it a geometric quality. Sound says that when the festival approached her about conceptualizing a piece for the outdoor location, her first idea was actually to photograph her reserve in Alberta.
“Home in Vancouver, for me, was that,” Sound shares. “But then I was thinking of other ways we could carry home with us. So I just really wanted it to be about my memories of growing up in East Van, and then this idea of beadwork, or a fringe jacket, being like a hug—kind of like you’re being embraced, being held, being taken care of, wherever you are.”
Sound’s next task was to find a photo-shoot location that screamed “East Van” to anyone who’d see it. She started at Kingsgate Mall, which she remembers frequenting throughout her childhood, but she soon realized that it would be too busy as a backdrop for a photo that would end up on the gridded substation facade. She tried La Casa Gelato on Venables Street next, with its bubblegum-pink brick walls—and that made her remember the baby-pink exterior of the Pink Pearl Chinese Restaurant on East Hastings Street, which is where the final photo was shot.
“If you live in East Van, or you’re going down Hastings a lot, you recognize that place,” says Sound, who recalls eating at the iconic dim-sum spot as a kid.
Wherever You Are is also currently on display at Ceremonial/Art as part of Sound’s solo exhibition Gussied Up. The images in the series show Cardinal Cire posing alongside fellow artists Meghan Weeks, who is a member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory, Alberta, and Lydia Brown, who is from the Snuneymuxw First Nation in Nanaimo.
Sound asked the trio to choose their own outfits for the photo shoots, but with one specific direction: “Imagine you’re going to Indigenous Fashion Week, and you’re hanging out with the aunties, going out,” she shares. “Like you get kind of dressed up, and you’re wearing your fringe and your earrings and all that.” Weeks, for instance, is wearing a black leather fringe vest that shows off her sleeve tattoos.
Having overcome the cultural suppression she faced throughout her childhood, Sound dons her beadwork in the city proudly. During the interview, she’s wearing a pair of stunning pink, white, and turquoise beaded fringe earrings made by Anishinaabe artist Cedar-Eve Peters. It’s a simple yet powerful act of love for the Indigenous style that now surrounds her every day.
It’s the same sentiment that Cardinal Cire represents in Wherever You Are by donning her great-grandfather’s jacket.
“She’s wearing a piece of home,” Sound shares fondly. “She’s carrying her ancestors with her wherever she goes. And it’s just that idea of building community and carrying our home wherever we are, especially if you’re wearing those types of ancestor heirlooms—if you’re lucky enough to have them.” 
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