NEIGHBOURS (2025)

In the Bank of Canada Vault at the Diefenbunker, Neeko Paluzzi uses fictional banknotes — created in the animation language of Norman McLaren’s film Neighbours (1952) — as building blocks of a shelter. The use of currency highlights the inextricable connection between wealth and war, where economies are so often shaped by the conflicts they fund. The structure recalls a section of the Berlin Wall, a prominent visual from our collective memory, and its surfaces are wheat-pasted with a dense collage of disarmament slogans and archival photographs from twentieth-century peace and protest movements. The act of messages torn down and replaced gives the surface a restless, unfinished energy — a visual reminder that protest is never static but, rather, it is constantly rewritten by each generation.

This installation is presented in conversation with Olivia Johnston’s Secret Garden — on view in the Allard Gallery — which offers a contrasting environment for reflecting on peace and memory. Both works explore the fragile pursuit of peace in a world shaped by conflict. Flower Power is on view at the Diefenbunker from November 7, 2025, until February 1, 2026.