Picnic at Government House
Chrystal Phan & Christian Yves Jones, 2025
Video, 3 channel sound, 22:55min
Featuring Chrystal Phan, Christian Yves Jones and Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde
Exhibited: No Burden, Comox Valley Art Gallery, Group Exhibition, 2025, Curated by Denise Lawson

Picnic at Government House is an experimental and exploratory video project that brings together artists from diverse backgrounds, each with unique experiences of the BIPOC burden. Filmed at Government House in Victoria, BC, the work uses the symbolism of this colonial and historically exclusive site to question who public spaces are truly designed for. The video captures the moment Chrystal Phan, Christian Yves Jones, and Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde met for the first time and exchanged stories. Through nonlinear editing, intricately woven storytelling, and a three-channel surround sound speaker setup, the video explores conversations around Indigenous, queer and intercultural experiences. While grounded in themes of racial and cultural identity, the project resists reducing its participants to these categories alone, emphasizing that identity is part of the context, but never the full story.