Valerie Durant
Kinship & Continuum: The Hidden Connections painPRO NeuroARTS Project, Coal Harbour 535 Thurlow Street, Vancouver, B.C. Opening September 27 2026 5:30pm - 8 pm
Kinship & Continuum: The Hidden Connections explores the reciprocal relationship between human experience and the natural world. Expanding upon work developed across several series in photography, sculpture, textiles and installation,Durant considers transformation, reflection and permeability across water, ice, forest and organic forms, revealing connections between ecological cycles and fundamental human experiences. Rather than positioning ourselves apart from nature, the works consider us as participants within an interconnected continuum shaped by change, resilience and regeneration.
Grounded in a daily practice of observation and immersion in the natural world, Durant’s photographs trace relationships across seemingly disparate landscapes. Arctic icebergs, ocean horizons, shifting reflections, submerged forms and entangled forest networks move between surface and depth, permanence and impermanence, the visible and unseen. Water reflects and distorts, ice dissolves, organic matter decomposes and regenerates, while branching forms reveal networks extending beyond what can be seen.
Across these works, recurring patterns and processes suggest connections between ecological systems, our bodies and lived experience. Boundaries become permeable: reflections merge with their surroundings, forms emerge and recede, and states of transformation reveal nature not as fixed, but as a continuous process of adaptation and renewal.
The exhibition considers how sensory and embodied encounters with art in a healthcare environment can support mental and physical wellbeing, shape perception, and deepen our relationship with the world around us.
Presented through the painPRO NeuroARTS Project, the exhibition invites sensory attention, contemplation and an awareness of our reciprocal relationship with the environments we inhabit. Kinship & Continuum considers human experience as part of an enduring ecological continuum—one in which interdependence, vulnerability, resilience and regeneration connect us to the larger living systems of which we are a part.
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ABOUT VALERIE - NEUROARTS BIOGRAPHY
Valerie Durant (BFA, MA) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver whose conceptual practice melds photography with sculptural materials, sound, video, and installation. Treating space as active material, her interconnected photographic works weave architectural and spatial relationships with material, body, and environment. Rooted in contemplative nature walks, her practice engages in a sensorial dialogue between the natural world and fundamental human experiences—life, death, and consciousness. Through alternative photographic processes, sculptural experimentation, and spatial installation, Durant explores our interdependent and regenerative world. Her work is held in public and private collections locally and internationally.
Durant’s relationship to neuroarts emerges from a career spanning design, health, environment, and art. After completing a Diploma in Design Formation at Langara College, she began her professional life designing healthcare interiors, where health, wellbeing, and client comfort were fundamental to the medical and dental environments she created. Her growing interest in sustainability and the built environment helped shape the direction of her subsequent work.
While raising a family, Durant completed a BFA at Emily Carr University. She and her family later relocated to South Africa, where they lived for five years. There, she undertook consulting projects in environmental policy, developed arts-based projects for the International Organization for Migration, and completed an MA in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Pretoria. Returning to Vancouver, Durant worked on social infrastructure projects with the City of Vancouver before leading major accelerated infrastructure projects for the Federal Government.
Now dedicated fully to her art practice, Durant’s work brings these experiences full circle, connecting her longstanding interests in health, the built and natural environments, and human experience. Her practice explores reciprocal relationships between human and ecological systems and how sensory and embodied encounters with art and nature can shape perception, connection, and wellbeing. Within neuroarts, these intersecting concerns extend her enduring inquiry into how the environments we inhabit—and the sensory experiences we encounter within them—affect body and mind.