Current Exhibitions
FALL 2026
We are currently close for install. We reopen with Strange Encounters, on Thurday, October 8 from 5-7PM.
Strange Encounters
Kiera Boult, Page Cowell and Wen Li
Exhibition: October 8-29, 2026
Reception: Thursday, October 8 from 5-7PM
artLAB Gallery
The artists in this exhibition explore what is lost within structures of power, whether through legitimation, education, or immigration. In Kiera Boult’s work, viewers travel from Woodstock, London, and Hamilton to Japan to stage the Rust-Belt-Self, a subject born from the post-industrial conditions of shame, loss, and the desire for self-making. Page Cowell’s work embraces the working-class tradition of “Making Do,” an intergenerational knowledge system which uses what is already here to create or fill in for what is missing. Wen Li speaks to how her mother tongue was diminished through immigrating to Canada and her responsibility as a matriarch to pass her language to the next generation, while also confronting her own relationship to loss, mourning, and the need to reclaim her identity. In this exhibition, the strange encounters with institutional authority are embodied through Boult’s pageantry of Rust, Cowell’s reconstituted domestic technologies, and Li's methodical and obsessive scrolls of Chinese characters; together, they find their own way to navigate the institution, challenging it from within.
Kiera Boult is a Hamilton-based interdisciplinary artist, performer, and cultural worker. Her practice uses camp and comedy to question the role and identity of the artist and the institution. Through her iconic persona, Kiki, a self-described “guilt-free” celebrity, Boult offers sharp critiques from the perspective of a celebrated Black biracial icon navigating white institutions with ease. She is an MFA candidate at Western University and a member of the Toronto Performance Art Collective, which organizes the biannual international performance festival 7a*11d.
Instagram: @kieraboult
Page Cowell uses kinetic sculpture as a means of exploring creativity as an everyday practice of adaptation through which people navigate material and social constraints. The use of gesture and repurposed domestic objects becomes a way to bring attention to everyday forms of ingenuity and to recognize that creativity and cultural production are abundantly present outside of traditional cultural and artistic authorities.
Instagram: @page.cowell
Wen Li a multidisciplinary visual artist. As a first-generation Chinese Canadian, Wen had worked as an engineer for nearly two decades. Her engineering experience in China and fine art training in Canada have enabled her to explore cultural hybridity from a unique angle, blending multiple perspectives in her art practice. Her recent research focuses on cultural translation, cultural negotiation, and the materiality of language in diasporic art practice.
Instagram: @wenli519
Roots
Vanesa Lares Diez, Alyssa Selina Filippelli, Aarushi Gupta, Claire Huizenga, Madalynn Kingrey, Prinda Sudhikam, Olivia Matheuszik, and Anastasia Mercer
Curated by Aarushi Gupta and Anastasia Mercer, artLAB Interns
Exhibition: October 8-29, 2026
Reception: Thursday, October 8 from 5-7PM
Cohen Commons
What connects us to the people and places we come from? “Roots” is an exploration of legacy and connection, examining the ways that relationships are carried, remembered, and transformed across generations. Bringing together artworks that place intimate family connections in dialogue with the relationships found within nature, the exhibition considers our environment as a reflection of ourselves. Roots grow beneath the soil creating anchors unseen at the surface much like the often invisible mark left on us by past generations. As seasons change, they leave traces behind shaping who we are today. Through this comparison, the exhibition reflects upon legacy as something that is continuously embodied, reinterpreted and forever becoming part of who we are.
Through works by Aarushi Gupta, Ana Mercer, Olivia Matheuszik, Prinda Sudhikam, Ally Filippelli, Vanesa and Claire Huizenga, “Roots” asks us to consider what it means to stay true to our origins while continuing to grow outward. It is a celebration of what grounds us, what grows with us, and what traces we leave behind.
