Upcoming Exhibitions & Events
SUMMER 2026
In Between Lights
Curated by Yijing Li, PhD Candidate
Works by: Julia Rose Sutherland, Michael Flomen, Ursula Handleigh
artLAB Gallery
Exhibition: July 9 - 23, 2026
Reception: Thursday, July 9 from 5-7PM
For much of photography's history, light has been understood as a tool.
A means of recording.
A means of preserving.
A means of fixing the world before it disappears.
Through light, photographs promise to archive what would otherwise be lost. They seem to transform the fleeting into the permanent, turning moments into evidence and memories into objects that can be revisited.
Yet light has always existed before photography.
Long before the invention of cameras,
before archives,
before images,
light was already moving across landscapes, touching water, stone, leaves, skin, and bodies. It arrived before us and will remain after us. Light does not belong to photography. Photography belongs to light.
This exhibition emerged from my growing desire to think with light differently.
Not as a tool to be used.
Not as a resource to be mastered.
But as a presence with its own temporality.
We cannot hold time still.
We cannot preserve it unchanged.
We can only encounter it as it passes through us.
What alternative photography offers is not the ability to capture time, but the possibility of translating it into forms we can perceive.
Tra
ces
TRANS
FORM
ATIONS
re
mem
ber
En coun ters
The works gathered in In Between Lights approach alternative photography through this understanding.
Fireflies leave fleeting traces across photosensitive surfaces.
Sunlight continues to alter plant matter long after an image is made.
Family photographs migrate onto birch bark, where memory settles into a surface that recalls skin.
In each case, light does not simply record a moment. It participates in an unfolding relationship between matter and duration.
Lingering in Between
Wen Li
Cohen Commons
Exhibition: July 9 - 23, 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.
TBA
Cassie Packham, MFA Candidate
artLAB Gallery
Exhibition: July 30 – August 13, 2026
Reception: Thursday, July 30 from 5-7PM
