Vethro Zero One: Performance Lecture

In conjunction with Curtis Talwst Santiago: worlds, worlds, worlds

September 19
2 PM | Flanagan Family Gallery 

At first glance, it could be a person. It wears the uniform, moves through the shift like anyone else on the line. But something is off. What the station was for has always been uncertain, marked in history yet never quite understood, perhaps never fully known even then. All anyone knows it by is Vethro Zero One. 

When the station was abandoned, Vethro Zero One resigned itself to a new task, one with no end date, to guide visitors through what remains. It has been doing this ever since. 

Vethro Zero One moves between roles without warning, one moment a tour guide reciting what little is known, the next something stranger, something that seems to slip out of its own uniform entirely. It pushes a cart of tangled electronic devices everywhere it goes, wires and machines whose purpose is never explained. 

It leads groups toward each chapter of the exhibition, then steps back, letting them wander, look closely, get near. It watches. It responds. 

Communication here moves through many channels at once, speech, static, rhythm, echo, mirroring the exhibition’s own scenography of horns, pipes and circuitry, an operative field where meaning is generated, disrupted and redirected in real time. Long after visitors leave, the station keeps humming. 

Free with registration.

About the Artist

Curtis Talwst Santiago (he/him)

Curtis Talwst Santiago puts entire worlds inside jewellery boxes. The dioramas, intricate handbuilt scenes no larger than a palm, are where his practice began and where it remains anchored, even as it has expanded into painting, sculpture, public art, and film.

Santiago was born in Edmonton and raised in Sherwood Park, Alberta, to Trinidadian immigrant parents. He grew up between two worlds, Caribbean household, Canadian suburb, and that double consciousness never left him. It shows up in the work: a barbershop scene beside a migration crisis, a basement dance party next to a border. Nothing in the Infinity Series stays safely in one world for long.

He came up through music. As a teenager he performed in an a cappella group, opened for Usher by 18, and earned a CBC Star Maker award at 23 before co-founding the funk band HI PHONIQS. His most recent solo full-length was recorded with Grammy Award winning producer Illangelo. Visual art eventually took over, but the musical foundation never disappeared, rhythm, resonance, and interruption run through everything he makes.

Art had always been there, in Vancouver it just took over. Friends who saw the work convinced him it belonged in galleries and museums, and he started to believe them. A flea market street vendor handed him his first ring box, setting the Infinity Series in motion. A knock on the right studio door led to a three-year mentorship with renowned First Nations artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. He later moved to New York, where a solo exhibition at the Drawing Center marked his arrival on the international stage.

His work is held in permanent collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Lenbachhaus Munich. He is represented by Uffner & Liu, New York, and Martina Simeti, Milan, and lives and works in Potsdam, Germany.