Join us to learn about Oscar Cahén’s early career in Canada as an illustrator. Guest lecturer Jaleen Grove is a Canadian artist and art historian whose research focuses on the history of illustration in the United States and Canada, illustration research, and periodical studies. She has conducted extensive research on Canadian illustrators and magazines, including authoring the book Oscar Cahén: Life and Work, published by Art Canada Institute in 2015, and two chapters in the major 2017 monograph on Cahén.

Grove will share insights from her ongoing research, offering deeper context for the exhibition Stories in Ink: Illustrations by Oscar Cahén.

Registration encouraged.

In the first of two events featuring artists Scott Rogers and Cole Swanson, this talk invites the artists to respond to the installation Mutualism (Fixed Assets) on view at the RMG until April 12, 2026. Building on Rogers’ interest in human-built infrastructures for the care and support of non-human beings, this work takes the form of a site-responsive bird feeding station. Assembled from broken automobile parts scavenged from roads and highways, Mutualism (Fixed Assets) connects with the industrial history of Oshawa, while proposing possibilities of ecological renewal out of the wreckage. Drawing on the resonance between their respective practices, Rogers and Swanson will explore a range of questions and reflections brought forward by this installation.

We are pleased to present this artist talk in partnership with the Art Gallery of Peterborough (AGP). Cole Swanson’s solo exhibition, Lithic Life, will be on view at the AGP until March 29, 2026. On March 7, the artists will travel to the Art Gallery of Peterborough to reflect on and respond to Swanson’s work in an artist-led exploration of his exhibition. Visit the AGP website for more info.

Scott Rogers was born in Mohkinstsis Calgary Treaty 7 and lives in Tkaronto, Canada. His practice negotiates the complex relationships between humans, other living beings, and land. Notable recent projects include Ormston House (Limerick, IR), ATLAS Arts (Skye, SCO), Pink Snow (Berlin, DE), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY), Kunstverein München (DE), Ivory Tars (Glasgow, SCO), Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH), and Franz Kaka (Toronto). In 2017 Rogers co-edited “Recognition”, the 14th issue of the journal FR DAVID, in collaboration with Will Holder and published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, DE). Scott’s audio installation Songs to the Sun was recently acquired for the Circulating Public Art Collection of Markham (CA). In 2025 he organised Affinities, an exhibition with two seven two gallery (Toronto), and presented Between Leaf & Light, a new site-specific sound installation for the Cancer Program at Barrie Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre.

Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Through an interdisciplinary and materially focused practice, he explores emerging relationships between species living together in a time of environmental crisis. Exhibiting at institutions across Canada and abroad, Swanson often engages with conservationists, scientists, and community partners to integrate advocacy, education, and access into the creative process. Swanson is a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University. For his research on Toronto’s double-crested cormorants, he was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship — the nation’s highest doctoral research prize. His work has been supported by private and public agencies including the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He is a faculty member in the visual arts programs at Humber Polytechnic (Toronto).

Presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Join us for an exciting conversation between exhibiting artist Ekow Nimako and local writer, educator, and researcher, Ashley Marshall. Together, Ekow and Ashley will discuss how the exhibition Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships re-imagines ancient African kingdoms through an Afrofuturist lens. Digging into histories of the African diaspora and envisioning abundant Black futures, this conversation will shed light on Ekow’s artistic practice and the inspiration and imagination that produced the exhibition.

This event is free and open to everyone. Seating will be provided for all guests.

Read more about the exhibition, Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships, here.

For more information on our facilities, please click here. If you have questions about the event or other requests, please email Hannah at [email protected].

Ekow Nimako is a Toronto-based, internationally exhibiting LEGO artist who crafts futuristic and whimsical sculptures from the iconic medium. Rooted in his childhood hobby and intrinsic creativity, Nimako’s formal arts education and background as a lifelong multidisciplinary artist inform his process and signature aesthetic. His fluid building style, coupled with the Afrofuturistic themes of his work, beautifully transcend the geometric medium to embody organic and fantastical silhouettes.

Ashley Marshall is a Durham-based writer, educator, and researcher. Their research critiques how power, economics, and politics influence social change, while advocating for imagination and creativity as alternatives to neoliberal market logics. Her work aims to use collaborative measures to dissect and render visible the various social and material flows that (re)produce hegemonic power structures and dismantle them. Marshall reviews art for Rungh Magazine, is a former Board member of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and is an advocate for the arts. With a penchant for Black surrealism, fabulism, the speculative, and foodie fiction, Marshall’s work is interested in what we can learn from nature to think towards humane frameworks. 

Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships is organized and circulated by Dunlop Art Gallery.