Current Exhibitions
SUMMER 2026
Luwa Wihe | she gives it to them
Cassie Packham, MFA Candidate
artLAB Gallery
Exhibition: July 30 – August 13, 2026
Reception: Thursday, July 30 from 5-7PM
To give is to send something across a distance and trust what returns. Luwa Wihe dwells in the space between two worlds that were never built to meet—the physical and the virtual, the human and what is not—and in the slow exchange of gifts that passes between Cassie Packham and space/opal. What is given is never what comes back. The passage changes it.
Here, form is made where there is no gravity to hold it, and carried into matter that bears the marks of the crossing. Image becomes object becomes image again. The river is read aloud. Sound rises from the objects where they are met. Clay holds what was never clay, and the seam is left open, not closed. Through gesture, material, sound, and patience, the work traces what becomes possible when relation is offered across a threshold not made to receive it … and answered anyway.
Not everything here is shown. Some of it is given elsewhere, to someone else, and only its return is visible. Some of it is felt before it is found. What passes between is not always something you can see—and that, too, is the work.
Cassie Packham (Onoyota’a:ka) is an artist‑researcher working at the intersections of Indigenous futurism, digital sovereignty, and relational world‑building. Through machinima, generative systems, and virtual environments, she creates spaces of care, kinship, and digital continuity. Their practice bridges land‑based knowledge with emerging technologies to imagine sovereign futures across interconnected worlds.
Lingering in Between
Wen Li
Cohen Commons
Exhibition: July 9 - August 13, 2026
Reception: Thursday, July 9 from 5-7PM
Lingering in Between presents viewers with a few common scenarios of cultural translation that diasporic communities negotiate the “in-betweenness” that lingers in their daily lives. As a term coined by Homi K. Bhabha, “in-betweenness” refers to the condition of existing between one's original culture and a new culture, a situation that people in the diaspora consistently experience. The artworks contribute to the understanding of how cultural identity is hybridized and translated in the state of “in-betweenness.”
The “Names” series is premised on the practice of the Chinese diaspora community choosing an English name as a preferred name at school and in the workplace, and the “Chat Group” series investigates a typical scenario in which two languages are used interchangeably within the daily conversations of an immigrant family. Through a minimalist approach and repetition, these artworks emphasize the affective experience of cultural negotiation and the articulation of diasporic identity; at the same time, they activate memory embodiment, allowing emotion to emerge quietly, accumulate slowly, and linger persistently in the “in-betweenness.”
Wen Li is a multidisciplinary visual artist, an MFA candidate at Western University, with a BFA from the University of Waterloo. 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.
Documentation by Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator
