Labyrinth of Hidden Messages

A poetic installation with the Tasai Collective designed as part of a labyrinth experience, where participants exchanged handwritten messages of hope through an interactive tree structure.

The Tasai Collective is a Vancouver-based group of artists of Japanese and Canadian backgrounds. Its members are united by a shared commitment to collaboration, poetic expression, and cross-cultural dialogue. Daly Co. founder Patrick Christie is an active member.

Guided by the motto “Friendship through collaboration,” Tasai creates performances that explore the intersection of Japanese and English, with live translations delivered through projections and other multimedia methods. At its core, Tasai’s practice is about building understanding across cultures, using art and performance as a space where language, identity, and meaning converge.

The Labyrinth of Hidden Messages marked an evolution of Tasai’s work beyond the stage — a poetic installation for community engagement, presented at šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ Square in Vancouver. Daly Co. was asked to create the Tree of Life, located at the centre of the labyrinth. This tree acted as a point of exchange: participants moved through the labyrinth, wrote a message of hope, and hung it on the tree. As they exited, they received a message written by someone else.

The design was based on the Japanese character for “tree” 木, with five radial segments rotating around a central axis — a layout inspired by the sakura flower. The structure was built as a kit-of-parts system, allowing it to be reused for future performances.