Everywhere you look at the 2025 Invictus Games, you’ll see Levi Nelson’s work. The contemporary Indigenous artist from Lil'wat Nation was part of the team that designed the brand for this year's event, and he’s the vision behind this year’s medals.
Nelson said he was absolutely overwhelmed to see gold, silver and bronze medals bearing his designs, the result of two years of work with Invictus.
"And then to think about the meaning of this medal going around the necks and over the hearts of warriors and veterans who have fought for our peace… I was elated,” recalled Levi.
"I had to hold back my tears."
Artistic influences
Levi has been painting since high school. He said his earliest influences were Salvador Dali, Picasso and other psychedelic artists. You can see Dali’s influence shine through in works like Levi’s The Urgency of Now or the Urgency of When.
And while his ancestors were skilled at medicine, basket-weaving and tanning deer hide into buckskin, Nelson didn't inherit a family background in carving or painting. He attributes that lack of linkage to the impacts of settler colonialism, which severed the passage of skills from one generation to the next.
“So my introduction to painting and to Indigenous art in general was through books and my education at Emily Carr University as well, and taking many, many, many visits to the [UBC] Museum of Anthropology (MOA) to study the masterworks,” he said.
Nelson pursued and earned an undergraduate degree from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver and a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York.
Working with Invictus
In 2023, Invictus put out a call for artists to design the brand for the 2025 games. Nelson, at that time living and studying in New York at Columbia University, was encouraged to apply.
He usually turns down logos or branding commissions like Invictus’, but valued the Games' mission to provide a competitive space for wounded, injured and sick military service personnel enough to reconsider.
“I have veterans in my family,” said Nelson. “They're no longer alive, but they fought in World War II, and so I just felt that there was no one better than myself to tackle this project coming out of the Lil’wat Nation.”
He applied and was offered the gig—with a twist.
“Being that the games are happening within the four host First Nations of Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam, Squamish [and] Lil’wat Nation, the chief and councils of each Nation wanted an artist from each Nation to participate," recalled Levi. “And so it was a collaboration.”
Nelson worked with Mack Paul of Musqueam Nation, Ray Natraoro from Squamish Nation and Olivia George from Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Despite the four artists’ close collaboration, he was the odd man out in a key respect.
“Those three artists are Coast Salish, whereas I come from an Interior Salish group," said Levi. "And so there are differences.
“Our languages are different, our regalia are different, and [there’s a] slight difference in artistic style. And so we sat down and thought about what we had in common, like our canoe culture, our blanket designs, and the eye of the Creator.”
The four artists’ work was unveiled in January 2024 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Shortly thereafter, Nelson was invited by Invictus to design the medals for the event.
“I was open to the challenge as a painter and, of course, I have skills in drawing, so ... I jumped into a lot of research," said Nelson. "I wanted to check out the work of the Coast Salish at the Museum of Anthropology, the [Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre], and also back to the original branding identity."
For several months, Levi plugged away at the design, using Coast Salish iconography, past Invictus medals, and the brand that he and his fellow artists had developed for the 2025 games.
Unveiling the medals
On Jan. 29, Invictus shared a video of Levi seeing the medals for the very first time. After two years of work on the look of the games, and several months developing the medals’ designs, he said he was overcome to see his work made tangible.
“I was speechless," he recalled. "It was very moving to see Coast Salish elements rendered in gold.
"And I think that all came together in that moment, opening up that box and seeing the medal for the first time, I suddenly realized that this was so much bigger than me and my artistry, and that I was just a sort of vessel for it.”
Levi’s design for the medals brings together several Coast Salish symbols: triangles representing the mountains and valleys often seen on traditional blankets at the top left; half of the ancestral eye—also referred to as the eye of the Creator just underneath; a war paddle down the right-top side of the medal; and a wave along the bottom to commemorate the Nations’ waterways.
All of it comes together to represent earth, sky and water.
“We are the people of the land, and this is our traditional territory, and the way we refer to our home is primarily through nature and the spirit of nature," Nelson said. "We belong to the land. Our language comes from here. We're born out of this place, and it's our home.”
The outer edge of the medal design emulates braided cedar rope, representing unity, continuity and strength. That rope design has also been woven into the medal ribbons.
Levi’s work with the Invictus Games will continue on to 2027. He’s been commissioned by the British Consul General of Canada to produce a painting representing a handover of the games from Whistler to Birmingham in two years’ time.
His work is on display in the permanent collection of Whistler’s Audain Art Museum and the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation Art Collection, as well as in private collections across Canada.
