Lycan's installation and photo-based practice explores the ways in which images and objects exist in the world, and "the way objects are valued, devalued, and revalued, dependent upon their place of display",[3] Interested in the discrepancies between experience and reproduction, Lycan often re-purposes and re-contextualizes ordinary things, referencing the collections and methods of display found in museums, gift shops, and department stores. For example, for her 2014 exhibition Underglow at Presentation House Gallery, Lycan recreated the interior of the New York avant-garde art gallery 291 based on photographs taken by founder Alfred Stieglitz in 1906. Her dual employment of photography and sculpture suggests a fluid relationship between the specifics of each medium. Her work has been described as "funny, critical, and ironic all at once."[4]
Superimposition: Sculpture and Image, Plug In, Institute of Contemporary Art, 2016[11]
More Than Nothing, Burrard Art Foundation, 2016[12]
Awards
In 2016, Lycan won the VIVA Award[13] from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts, an award given to mid-career BC artists.[14][15] She was also the recipient of the City of Vancouver Live-Work Studio from 2012 to 2015, a competitive award that offers highly regarded Vancouver-based artists low-cost live-work studios for a period of three years in support of their artistic practice.[16]