Upcoming Exhibitions & Events
FALL 2026
Strange Encounters
Kiera Boult, Page Cowell and Wen Li
Exhibition: September 29 – October 7, 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
Annual Juried Exhibition
Exhibition: November 12 – December 3, 2026
Reception: Thursday, November 12 from 6-8PM
artLAB Gallery
TOMPE2026 (The Ontario Miniature Print Exhibition)
Print London
Exhibition: November 12 – December 3, 2026
Reception: Thursday, November 12 from 6-8PM
Cohen Commons
