WESTERN FRONT – Séance for Extinct Species of Birds

Hand-drawn, stylized bird-like figure formed from yellow, green, and purple letters on a white background.

Séance for Extinct Species of Birds is an ongoing project by artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa which explores visualization and invocation as (re)generative modes of cross-temporal and interspecies connection.

Ramírez-Figueroa will guide a group of participants through a séance exercise of collective visualization focused on conjuring the spirits of extinct birds who were once native to the area. Through this ritual, participants are invited to listen beyond temporal and speciated boundaries to discover ways imagination might allow new auditory, linguistic and artistic connections to surface when direct access is no longer possible.

The performance will inform the artist’s presentation during the assembly Night follows night, and the two and three-stringed instruments talk to each other taking place at Emily Carr University of Art + Design on October 31, 2026.

Open to all. Limited to sixteen participants.

About the Artist

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa is an artist based in Guatemala City, Guatemala, whose practice spans performance, video, printmaking, sculpture, and installation, and reflects on collective memory, displacement, state violence, and colonial legacies in Latin America. His work incorporates personal, dreamlike, and bodily narratives. He has held solo exhibitions at MoMA, New York; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; MAMM, Medellín; Museum M, Leuven; The Power Plant, Toronto; New Museum, New York; Kunsthalle Lissabon; CAPC, Bordeaux; and Gasworks, London. He participated in the 57th Venice Biennale and the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo. His work is held in collections including the Tate, Guggenheim, and MoMA.

Black-and-white portrait of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa with tousled dark hair and a beard, wearing a dark collared shirt over a light undershirt and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile. The background is a soft, out-of-focus pale wall.

Accessibility

The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of twenty-six stairs.

Alternative formats: Live ASL interpretation available upon request.

Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.

Acknowledgements

100 Years in the Making | This event is organized in support of  ECU 100, Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s centennial anniversary. Presented with support from the Audain Foundation.

Organized by Libby Leshgold Gallery, Western Front, and the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia, with additional support from the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies; the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery; the Indigenous Initiatives Fund; Critical Image Forum; and the Curatorial Research Cluster at the University of British Columbia.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, digital drawing from Séance for Extinct Species of Birds (2011-ongoing). Courtesy of the artist.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, digital drawing from Séance for Extinct Species of Birds (2011-ongoing). Courtesy of the artist.
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, digital drawing from Séance for Extinct Species of Birds (2011-ongoing). Courtesy of the artist.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, digital drawing from Séance for Extinct Species of Birds (2011-ongoing). Courtesy of the artist.
Portrait of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. Photo by Lovis Ostenrik.

Portrait of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. Photo by Lovis Ostenrik.

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.