a fervid surfacing

a fervid surfacing by Joy Wong

Exhibition: September 14 – October 24, 2021

Join Joy for an artist talk and workshop on October 2nd at 2 PM!

Across cultures, time, and geographic borders, people have used methods of fermentation to make foods more digestible, delicious, and longer lasting. As the RBC Emerging Artist in Residence at the RMG, Joy Wong has been preoccupied with fermentation. Their new work adopts these practices as a framework for critiquing society’s reverence for purity and fear of contamination, and for asserting that bodies, borders, and cultures are porous, rather than impenetrable.

To create the work in a fervid surfacing, Wong turned to SCOBYs, the colonies of bacteria and yeast that transform sweetened tea into tart kombucha. The artist prepared several batches of kombucha in vessels of assorted shapes and sizes to grow and harvest the slippery, fleshy skins that form in the fermenting tea. Wong dried the SCOBYs on different surfaces, which have imprinted the skins with various textures; the woven pattern of nets reappears throughout the installation. Once drippy and flabby, many of the skins are now rigid and brittle. Others are distinctly gruesome in the way they drip and languish on copper supports. These (net)works and Wong’s embellishments in paint highlight the artist’s interest in origins and the factors that shape how people and places relate to one another. Visually, they challenge the idea that perfection or purity in culture, or in ourselves, is possible, let alone desirable.

Wong also uncovers metaphors for human migration and experiences of living away from one’s motherland. Like other fermented foods, kombucha relies on a starter and the exclusion of other bacteria in the culture. Commonly referred to as a mother, a starter SCOBY can yield numerous batches of kombucha, producing with each fermentation additional SCOBYs for yet more batches. Echoing the complexity of cultural inheritance, access to an original SCOBY eventually becomes impossible to trace. Wong is drawn to the way these processes shed light on the settlement of people in colonized lands, especially the structures that reinforce desirability and belonging for certain cultures while actively rejecting others. a fervid surfacing bears these realities and invites viewers to consider how we are each embedded in the fermentation space and what responsibilities that truth bestows.

The RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation and the RBC Emerging Artist Project.

The artist would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for supporting this project.

Joy Wong (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto, with Cantonese immigrant settler ancestry. She works in painting, print media, poetry, and sculpture. Their practice focuses on the intersections of disgust and beauty, decay and decadence, and connects material investigations with the shifting physicality of a queer and racialized body. She obtained her BFA from York University with a double major in Visual Arts and Creative Writing and her MFA from Western University where she received a SSHRC grant for her research. Wong was a finalist for the 2018 RBC Canadian Painting Competition and was the 2019 Pope Artist in Residence at NSCAD.

This exhibition is supported by the RBC Foundation and the RBC Emerging Artist Project.

Undeliverable

Co-presented by Tangled Art + Disability and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery

RMG: September 18, 2021 – February 13, 2022
Tangled Art + Disability: September 17 – October 29, 2021

Undeliverable is a continuation of artist Carmen Papalia’s curatorial practice. Envisioning curation as a form of care, the exhibition brings together six artists from the Mad, Deaf and disability community, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Chandra Melting Tallow, Jessica Karuhanga, jes sachse, Aislinn Thomas, and Carmen Papalia with Heather Kai-Smith, re-envisioning the museum around the demands and desires of the disabled body/mind. Presented across two spaces – Tangled Art + Disability and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery – the exhibition features ambitious new work that challenges institutional structures and centres mutual accountability.

Kindly note that both the RMG and Tangled Art + Disability are scent free spaces. In order to remain respectful of individuals who may have sensitivity to certain scents or smells, we would like to ask all visitors to help us in creating a fragrance free environment that everyone can enjoy.

Interested in learning more about sensitivity to scents and fragrances? Head over to our Instagram feed for a Takeover by artist Aislinn Thomas that shares more information about how you can help make public spaces more accessible and safe for all those who experience barriers from the toxicants that are in so many personal care, cleaning, building, and fragrance products.

About the Curator and Artists

Carmen Papalia is an artist and disability activist who uses organizing strategies and improvisation to navigate his access to public space, art institutions, and visual culture. His socially-engaged practice expresses his resistance of support options that promote ableist concepts of normalcy, like white canes and other impairment-specific accommodations that only temporarily bridge barriers to participation in an otherwise inaccessible, policy-based system. Papalia designs experiences that invite participants to expand their perceptual mobility and to claim access to public and institutional spaces. Papalia’s walks, workshops, and interventions are an opportunity to model new standards and practices in the area of accessibility.

Heather Kai Smith is an artist who currently lives and works in the unceded Coast Salish Territory known as Vancouver. She completed her MFA at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2017), and her BFA in Drawing from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2009). Her current practice explores the potential embedded within archival images of protest, collectivity, and intentional communities activated through drawing, observation and iteration. Rooted in the practice of drawing, her work has lent itself to projects in animation, printmaking, and installation.

Jessica Karuhanga is an African-Canadian artist who works through writing, video, drawing and performance. She has presented her work at The Bentway, Toronto (2019), Nuit Blanche, Toronto (2018), Onsite Gallery at OCAD, Toronto (2018), Museum London, London (2018), Goldsmiths, London, UK (2017) and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2016). Her writing has been published by C Magazine, Susan Hobbs Gallery and Fonderie Darling. She has been featured in i-D, DAZED, Visual Aids, Border Crossings, Toronto Star, CBC Arts, filthy dreams, Globe and Mail and Canadian Art. She earned her BFA from Western University and her MFA from University of Victoria. She lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Vanessa Dion Fletcher graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with an MFA in performance, and has exhibited across Canada and the US, including Art Mur (Montreal), Eastern Edge Gallery (Newfoundland), The Queer Arts Festival (Vancouver), and Satellite Art Fair (Miami). Her work is in the Indigenous Art Centre (Gatineau, Quebec), Joan Flasch Artist Book collection, Vtape, and Seneca College. Vanessa is supported by the City of Toronto Indigenous partnerships fund as artist in residence at OCAD University for 2019.

Aislinn Thomas is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes video, performance, sculpture, installation, and text. She culls material from everyday experiences and relationships, creating work that ranges from poignant to absurd, and at times straddles both. Her recent works explore the generative nature of disability while pushing up against conventional access measures. Aislinn is a settler of Ashkenazi and British descent. She currently lives and works near the Grand River, on land promised to the Six Nations.

Chandra Melting Tallow is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and writer of mixed ancestry from the Siksika Nation. Their practice confronts the ghosts of intergenerational trauma and their relationship to the body – utilizing both humor and surrealism to subvert oppressive structures of power. They have exhibited across Turtle Island as an installation, sound and performance artist.

jes sachse is an artist, writer and performer whose work addresses the negotiations of bodies moving in public/private space and the work of their care. Their work & writing has appeared in NOW Magazine, The Peak, CV2 -The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing, Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture and Disability Activism in Canada, and the 40th Anniversary Edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Jes presently lives in Toronto.

Image Description:
Relative Gradient by Vanessa Dion Fletcher. A large, thin circle is made of porcupine quills folded back and forth in a zigzag pattern. The colours of the quill embroidery form a gradient of warm reds, pinks, yellows, browns and whites.

Recent Acquisitions: Abstraction

The foundation of the RMG’s Permanent Collection was an initial donation of 37 works by Alexandra Luke in 1967. This gift set the original focus on Painters Eleven and contemporary Canadian Art, which continues to shape our collecting priorities today. Over the years, the Collection has grown to include nationally significant works of modern Canadian abstraction, the largest holding of Painters Eleven in the world, and an expanding collection of contemporary art. These areas will continue to be enhanced alongside an intention to collect historically excluded artists to reflect a more holistic, diverse, and equitable and reflective history of Canadian art.

This exhibition features recent acquisitions to the Permanent Collection from the past five years, focusing on works that tell the ongoing history of abstraction in Canada. Included in the exhibition are recent acquisitions of works by Painters Eleven, early examples of important Canadian modernism, and contemporary abstract paintings. Abstraction is an important part of the RMG’s story, and this exhibition highlights our efforts to expand and strengthen this part of our history.

Primary Structures

Bowmanville-based artist Ron Eccles’ abstract paintings draw inspiration from a deep sense of place. Rooted within this community, Eccles is inspired by his frequent drives along the shoreline of Lake Ontario from Bowmanville to Port Hope, enjoying the patterned farmland, weather changes, and seasonal colours. His reflections on time, geography, and light manifest in his geometric and structured abstract paintings.

With a prolific career spanning more than five decades, this exhibition focuses on a series of recent work called “White Line Compositions” and includes additional works created within the last fifteen years. Eccles is trained as a printmaker, which informs his painting process and allows him to create simplicity from complex processes, skillfully building layers within his work. Often working on more than one painting at a time, he begins by grounding the painting in blocks of colours, adding different tones to prevent flatness and create transparency and brilliance. A good example of this is Signal Warning (2020), where the red diptych seems to emit light from the wall. After colour, Eccles begins to build structure with white lines, allowing shapes and forms to bleed through, such as in works like River Ice (2020) or North Northwest (2019). While both titles of these works suggest landscapes, they are not representational works; instead, they conjure up feelings, moods, and recollections of a landscape. These connections to nature and memory are not clear to Eccles in the early stages of his process, and it is only after he lays down a primary structure of colour, line, and form that something cues his memory and a subject is realized. As Eccles says: “The painting process feeds you as much as you feed it, it tells you what to do.”

Born in Oshawa, Ron Eccles studied art at the Ontario College of Art (1967), the University of Guelph (B.A., 1970), and the University of Iowa (M.A., 1972). During this time he specialized in printmaking, studying under Frederick Hagan, Walter Bachinski, Gene Chu, and Mauricio Lasanky. In 1972, he moved to Peterborough where he taught drawing at Sir Sandford Fleming College, and would go on to teach printmaking at the Ontario College of Art and the University of Guelph. His work can be found in private, corporate and public collections including the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Blackwood Gallery, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (Iowa, USA), The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, and the Art Gallery of Guelph. His studio and his home are located in Bowmanville, where he lives with his wife and fellow artist, Jane Eccles.

Can I Play Outside?

Join us for a Live Artist Talk + Drawing Event with Jaspal Birdi on February 24, 2021 from 12:00PM -1:00PM.

Using her smartphone, laser printers, and paint, Jaspal Birdi plays with colour and technical glitches to make large photo-based works. In this exhibition, she uses photos from her phone’s camera roll to explore the nature of memory, the interplay between physical and virtual worlds, and the potential for audience interaction in collaborative artmaking.

To make one of her works, Birdi manually overrides the low-ink warnings from her printer to create an ethereal copy of a chosen image. She scans the printed image back into her computer, then prints a second, enlarged copy that is broken into a grid, like tiles or oversized pixels. Piece by piece, Birdi transfers the image to various surfaces with gesso before removing the paper and using paint to further embellish the final image with her memories and interpretations. In this case, the images are affixed to emergency blankets, mirrors, and the gallery wall. These efforts between artist and machine make images that are wholly transformed. Exaggerated, embellished, and missing details, the copies are not unlike memories, which also tend to be altered by their own retrieval.

Can I Play Outside? is particularly concerned with the interactions that take place through digital screens, which play an active role in framing and constructing perceptions of self and others. Think about your own camera roll and the images you may make or encounter online. What sorts of stories do these photos tell? What is remembered and what is forgotten? Alongside these questions, Can I Play Outside? captures the artist’s bid for spontaneous and curious fun. Birdi invites you to add your personal memories and interpretations to the work using a digital drawing app. The multiple versions and layers of this living artwork will mimic the artist’s process of assembling pieces into a whole and will allow audiences to generate a picture that is multi-dimensional, constantly changing, and reflective of collective experiences.

Jaspal Birdi is a Canadian artist who combines photography and painting by experimenting with contemporary technologies. Born in Toronto, Canada 1988, Birdi completed her BFA in drawing and painting from OCAD University 2010, a Masters in Arts Management from Istituto Europeo di Design 2013, and a Specialization in Curating Contemporary Art from Venice School of Curatorial Studies 2016. She is the recipient of the Arte Laguna Solo Exhibition Prize in 2013, as well as the 2017/18 Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Artist Residency Fellowship, during which she also received the BLM Stonefly Art Award. In 2017 Birdi co-curated the exhibition “Command-Alternative-Escape” for the opening week of the Venice International Art Biennale. During the 2018 Berlin Art Week, her works were presented in “Transferred Recall,” a curated solo exhibition. Currently, Birdi is a 2020 Visual Arts Fellow for the Fondazione Culturale SanFedele Art Prize.

This exhibition is supported by the RBC Foundation and the RBC Emerging Artist Project.

Who were Painters Eleven? And why are they important to the RMG?

Painters Eleven was the first abstract artist collective in Ontario. They were founded in 1953 at the cottage of artist Alexandra Luke on the Oshawa/Whitby border. Rather than having a common philosophy or style, the diverse group of artists banded together around their shared desire to support abstraction and exhibit together. As Jock Macdonald noted: “The meaning of our group is the fact that we think alike about creativeness in art and the unity established is our power.” The group was unified in their appreciation for each other’s work and a commitment to promoting abstraction.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s collection began in 1969 when artist Alexandra Luke, a member of the Painters Eleven, donated thirty-seven works from her private collection. Along with this donation of work that launched the RMG’s collection, she and her husband, Ewart McLaughlin, also gave a generous donation towards the construction of the first gallery building. Luke’s donation of art included work by all of the members of Painters Eleven and helped to establish the RMG’s unique focus on collecting and exhibiting the work of Painters Eleven.

Today, the RMG’s collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints by Painters Eleven has grown to over 1000 works, including works from before and after the Painters Eleven years (1953-1960). The RMG has regular exhibitions featuring works by the group, pulling together different aesthetics or themes. This exhibition features work by each member of Painters Eleven and shares a common aesthetic approach of clean lines and hard edges. In the 1960s, members such as Harold Town, William Ronald and Ray Mead experimented with the prevalent hard edge-style painting characterized by areas of flat colour with sharp edges. While these artists explicitly experimented with hard edge painting, the other members did not fully venture in this style but did commonly explore sharp lines and large colour fields. Constantly exploring abstraction, the members of Painters Eleven were not defined by abstract expressionism, but were committed to many new forms of abstraction.

Rolph Scarlett: Inner Vision

“The searching non-objective artist does not turn to nature for inspiration or direction; rather, he looks within himself, within his own soul, as he strives to cultivate that spark of inner vision which lies latent in all of us.” – Rolph Scarlett

Artist Rolph Scarlett described abstraction as the highest form of creative expression and wrote in-depth about his search for pure form. Born in Guelph, Ontario in 1889, Scarlett was a modernist painter, designer, and jeweler. He moved to New York City in 1908 where he studied briefly with the Art Students League before relocating to Los Angeles where he worked as a set and industrial designer. In the 1920s, while on a trip to Europe, Scarlett met Paul Klee who encouraged him to experiment with spontaneous abstraction. After settling in New York City in 1937, Scarlett befriended Hilla von Rebay, the first director of the Guggenheim Museum and a champion of abstract art. Through this friendship, Scarlett would become dedicated to modernism and became a lecturer at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York (later renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). His early non-objective works show clear influence from Klee and Kandinsky, often featuring geometric elements, bright colours, and a rhythmic style. While the aesthetic interests of his inner circle, including Hilla Rebay and Rudolf Bauer, were focused on the expression of the spiritual through abstraction, for Scarlett it was about aesthetics and universal order. He was a prolific painter, who continued to explore abstraction until his death in 1984. His work is in many public and private collections including the Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

This exhibition features eleven works by Rolph Scarlett recently acquired by the RMG. These paintings exemplify a range of styles from geometric abstraction to his later looser and more expressive approach. The RMG continues to be committed to telling the story of modernism in Canada, and Rolph Scarlett played an important role in this history through his contributions to abstract art in North America.

Breaking Down Stereotypes: First Peoples House of Learning (FPHL)

This is an exhibition of posters that combat racist labels and assumptions with positive representations of Indigenous identity. In collaboration with photographer Annie Sakkab, the posters were created by First Peoples House of Learning (FPHL) at Trent University with volunteers from the Indigenous student community.

When pursuing post-secondary education, Indigenous students often face the ongoing impacts of colonization and historical trauma while reclaiming and revitalizing their own cultural identities. In some cases, they may be learning about who they are as Indigenous peoples for the first time. At Trent University, FPHL offers cultural services to a diverse community of Indigenous learners (First Nations Status, Non-Status, Métis and Inuit), providing them with emotional, spiritual, cultural, and physical support as they navigate the university and their personal growth.

In recent years, FPHL recognized that many students struggle with their sense of identity and endure racist treatment from fellow students, professors, and university staff stemming from social and cultural stereotypes. Inspired by the positive impact of a poster series in her own community, Cultural Advisor/Counsellor Betty Carr-Braint set out to confront these harmful misconceptions and create an opportunity for Indigenous students to share their truths. The team at FPHL worked together to bring Breaking Down Stereotypes to life and were excited to launch the project celebrating Indigenous pride and identity at the annual Elders Gathering in 2019. Carr-Braint and the FPHL are very proud of this project and are so happy to be able to share it with communities beyond the campus.

Learn more about FPHL.

Betty Carr-Braint provides more details about how the project came together:

“This project came together over a couple of years here at Trent University. As the Cultural Advisor/Counsellor at First Peoples House of Learning, I support students who are struggling in a variety of areas; emotionally, spiritually, culturally, physically, and mentally. Through this process we found a shared experience as we realized many of our students were struggling with identity, feeling traumatized by the stereotypical responses from professors, other students, and staff as well. Through no fault of their own Indigenous students were often questioned about their identity, about why they did didn’t know their own history, about why “you people” don’t pay for education or pay taxes and the list of misconceptions and myths goes on. I felt that we needed to educate the broader University about these inappropriate and often racist remarks. I was involved in a poster series in my own community a few years ago and remembered what an impact that had on the women in the community. This was a bit different and yet I felt like we could create something that breaks down these stereotypes. The Team at First Peoples House of Learning (FPHL) was in total support of this idea, and we took the time to bring this one to life. We are so grateful for all the support.
Often, Indigenous students struggle with the on-going impacts of colonization and historical trauma. As a result of the historical attempts to assimilate our nations many students are going through a process of restoring, revitalizing, and reclaiming their own cultural identity, or may even be in the process of learning who they are as Indigenous peoples. At the same time, they are also learning what it means to be a learner at a University where there is often little Indigenous representation.
Throughout the years, we have heard from our students, the hurtful and often racist remarks they hear; comments such as, “you don’t look like an Indian” or “let’s ask her/him, they are native”, thinking Indigenous students are experts on all things native, or “are you sure you are Aboriginal” and the list goes on.
At FPHL, our job is to continually challenge and change these perceptions. We felt it was important to have Indigenous students share the truth about their experiences. We reached out to Indigenous students across Trent University and asked for volunteers to be part of this Poster series that would look at breaking down these stereotypes. We had the Indigenous students choose which stereotype they wanted to address and then we countered the stereotype through photo messaging showing a different view – strong Indigenous students who are proud of who they are. The other point of this series was to show that Indigenous peoples come in all colours, from light skinned to dark skinned and everything in between.
Our Poster series, “Breaking Down Stereotypes”, was launched at the Elders Gathering in 2019 and received amazing acknowledgment. We are working at creating safety for Indigenous students across campus. It is important to acknowledge the courageous students who chose to engage in our poster series and we are so grateful to each of them. Of course, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge our photographer extraordinaire, Annie Sakkab. Her willingness to support us as we brought this project to life has been so incredible. Her compassion and encouragement helped the students navigate their experiences as they engaged with expressing the stereotypes. Our gratitude for the amazing photos as well as the design and creation of our posters. We are so proud of this project.”
– Betty Carr-Braint

Autism Home Base: Meet Me At The Hub

Created by members of Autism Home Base (AHB), this exhibition brings together a selection of work centered on the theme of connection through shared interests and experiences. ABH is a social network for adults on the autism spectrum, which aims to empower adults with autism and their families to lead rich, active lives, and is committed to providing support and inclusion across the autism spectrum. The self-expression and generous reflection of identity in this exhibition demonstrate the pride and complexity of lived autism experiences. Each work is an opportunity to connect and to build understanding across difference. Taken together, the works illustrate the diversity and beauty of the neurodivergent perspectives that enrich our communities. The exhibition says: what makes us unique also unites us. While stereotypes divide, genuine connection brings us together.

AHB Member Hannah Warner was invited to contribute to this introduction. What follows is her reflection on the project:

“The AHB Hub is a non-judgmental space which facilitates opportunities for discovery, socialization, and recreation, all within a safe and structured environment. This is important because many of us on the spectrum struggle with initiating our own opportunities and/or relationships. At the hub, shared experiences become a foundation for inclusiveness and compassionate expectations. It is a refuge where we can be ourselves without constant reminders that we are different.
Autism is complicated. Every one of us experiences autism differently, but the way others treat us because of it is pretty common. I have felt overwhelmed and isolated in the neurotypical world. However, I still wouldn’t want to be ‘normal.’ Instead, I cherish the beauty and inspiration my autistic brain finds in the world and its ability to recognize the things I am passionate about. Sadly, our interests are often used to alienate us. When it comes to autism, many people see us only as a caricature, assuming our special interests are the only thing there is to know about us. They read our enthusiasm and eagerness to share information as something to avoid. Misrepresenting the experiences that we live for as eccentric obsessions is a stereotype that undermines a great potential for recognizing that humanity is complicated and that there are more similarities than differences between us.
Each member of AHB is multifaceted and multidimensional. Like anyone else, we have interests and hobbies, hopes and fears. Our hearts are just as big as our brains and worth getting to know. Our feelings are visceral and sometimes insuppressible, similar
to your own. Look carefully and I am sure you will find yourself reflected in some way. So please enjoy this exhibit. Find out a little about a stranger; discover a little about yourself.”
– Hannah Warner, Member of Autism Home Base

Thank you to all of the AHB members who took part in this exhibition and shared their stories. Our gratitude also goes out to Hailey Yates (art instructor), Rachel Major (program support), and Tristin Haines (blueburnmedia.ca) who edited the art-making video.

Virtual Tour

Terra Economicus

Will Kwan’s research-driven artistic practice maps complex cultural and economic relations to reveal how power is consolidated and how legacies of colonialism persist in the present. In Terra Economicus, Kwan pulls together a constellation of works created over the last decade that explore conceptions of landscape as expressions of privatization, commodification, and segregation.

The central work, Terra Economicus (Superior) samples from the palette of Lawren Harris’ iconic painting Lake Superior (1926), and links the northern Ontario landscapes captured by the Group of Seven with found video footage taken from online real estate listings in the same regions of the province. These clips, shot by drone, alternate between soaring views of the properties and floating interior shots of the luxury summer homes built on them. Although the area is densely populated with cottages, the footage had been carefully shot to create an illusion of solitude and exclusivity.

This impulse to frame and privatize land is also referenced in the title Terra Economicus. A reworking of the Latin terra nullius, which means “no one’s land”, the term was used as a legal construct in the colonization of North America and Australia to justify claims to new territory. This deliberate negation of Indigenous people and history supported waves of settler colonialism in Canada. The empty landscape paintings of the Group of Seven further helped to forge a fictitious national identity that celebrated the land as open for ownership and extraction. Each work in this exhibition unpacks a different way that an economic belief system or cultural narrative is imposed on the natural world as a frame for exploitation and dispossession.

Will Kwan is a Hong Kong-born, Toronto-based Canadian artist. His work is held in the permanent collections of M+ (Hong Kong), Folkestone Artworks (Kent), and Hart House at the University of Toronto. Kwan has been artist-in-residence at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester), the Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). He has participated in exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (New York), ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), CAC Vilnius (Lithuania), the MAC VAL (Vitry-sur-Seine), the Art Museum at UofT (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Western Front (Vancouver), and in biennials/triennials in Liverpool, Folkestone, Montreal, and Venice. Kwan is an Associate Professor in Studio Art in the department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Toronto Scarborough, and the Masters of Visual Studies Program at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto St. George.