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Festival 2026 Logo
Spindle Chorus by Chase Gray
Unison Festival 2026 is proud to feature a stunning original logo by two-spirit artist Chase Gray (Musqueam and Tsimshian), created on their traditional xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territory – Vancouver, BC.
Titled Spindle Chorus, the logo brings together themes of voice, community, land, identity, and healing – all core elements of this year’s festival theme, Music Healing Spirit. The image shows four singers encircled by cattails, grounded in Coast Salish artistic tradition and deeply personal to the artist.
“The logo uses the imagery of 4 people singing together, 4 being a sacred number for many Coast Salish peoples. They are surrounded by cattails. I thought a lot about our different medicines and natural materials, and lately the cattails have been coming up a lot in my life.” – Chase Gray
For Chase, cattails are more than a visual motif. They grow in abundance on the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm reserve, a natural reminder of home and place, and they also carry ancestral meaning. Chase recently learned that their great-great-grandmother was a cattail weaver, an insight that helped shape the direction and energy of the design.
Their logo blends these threads – ancestral knowledge, land-based materials, and artistic expression – into a contemporary celebration of queer identity and shared creativity. The circular shape is a spindle whorl, an object used in traditional weaving, but here it also evokes motion, voice, and the cyclical nature of community gatherings like Unison.
“It brings old practices to life again, and I feel like it resonates a lot with how, no matter what instruments may come to be, a voice can also be an instrument. Singing may not come to everybody – just like how weaving may not come to everybody. For many people who sing, the act of singing can have a similar effect as being brushed off – it brings a sense of relief and wholeness.”
In addition to its symbolic layers, Spindle Chorus is visually striking – vibrant, welcoming, and full of movement. It incorporates the modern rainbow colours that represent the diversity of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, while staying grounded in the visual language of Coast Salish design.
Chase’s work often explores intersections: past and present, land and voice, culture and queerness, bold colour and quiet meaning. They describe their visual style as a personal evolution of Coast Salish design that honours xʷməθkʷəy̓əm traditions while making space for new forms of expression.
We're honoured to share this logo as the visual heartbeat of Unison Festival 2026.
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