artLAB 2025-2026
Winter 2026
artLAB Gallery: Grounding: States of GenderCohen Commons: At The Edge: Revolution
Cohen Commons: Not/For the Money Publication Launch
Fall 2025
artLAB Gallery: 24th Annual Juried ExhibitionCohen Commons: Carbon Flurry
artLAB Gallery: The More Elegant and Graceful Plant
Cohen Commons: reframing STEM
EVENT: Mid-Autumn (Moon) Festival
artLAB Gallery: LiminalEnergyZeroSignalStillDevilObject
Cohen Commons: Human Impressions: Traces from the Western Print Archives
WINTER 2026
Grounding: States of Gender
Gita Hashemi
Curated by Soheila Esfahani
Exhibition: January 9 – 29, 2026
Thursday, January 8 from 4–6PM
artLAB Gallery, JLVAC
Photo credit: Justin Wonnacott
Reproducing an Iranian woman’s auto-ethnography in a visually-striking immersive installation, Grounding was created over an 8-day livestreamed durational performance in February 2017. Heralding the global #Me-Too movement and the #WomanLifeFreedom uprising in Iran, in this installation Gita Hashemi puts gender-based violence and disparity – in fact, the very construction of gender itself – in sharp focus and places the audience fully immersed in it.
Grounding combines life writing with live writing – what Hashemi calls “embodied writing,” using Persian calligraphy only to break its traditional limits. Rather than transcribing sacred text or classical poetry (formal writing by men and about men) on intimate-sized gilded manuscript paper to be owned, here Hashemi writes and records in public – on her hands and knees and marking her own reactions in red ink thus making the labour and our witnessing of it inseparable from the artwork – on massive scrolls and in colloquial language, a woman’s highly intimate stories, what remains absented from formal discourse. The artist’s original statement reads:
“The narrative has been emerging through conversations between us about how being women has affected our lives . . . Writing the self in a public space is an act of liberation when it reveals what we are trained, co-opted, forced, or acculturated to hide. In talking and then writing about intimately personal and sometimes traumatic experiences, Zahra and I have had to overcome many inhibitions. We entered each other’s lives as witness. Therefore, the process has been not only revealing but healing.”
Grounding addresses the politics of gender in contemporary Iran and beyond:
“This piece started with the dream of a space where writing could fully intertwine with embodied gestures and performative expression to explore the potentials of written word in creating visual-emotional landscapes. While I was dreaming, voices and images from the outside world infiltrated in my dreamscape: There is the man who is now president saying “grab [women] by the pussy” and the over-exposed image of an imported made-up doll standing beside him. There is the campus rapist walking free, and the radio host acquitted of sexual assault. There were Pussy Riot in Russia, masses of women in rallies against rape in India, and Women’s March on Washington. There, is the Islamic State, and here, in the “West,” and around the globe is the state of poverty that increasing numbers of women are pushed into, courtesy of neo-liberalism and politics of austerity.”
Grounding was selected as the monographic exhibition of the year in 2017 by the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. The jury cited the work for “representations of freedom and gender that transgress geographical, political, and cultural boundaries.” It was originally created at Carlton University Art Gallery as part of Open Space Lab, curated by Anna Khimasia.
This installation at the artLAB includes the original scrolls written in 2017. The video combines the footage shot on days 1 and 2 of the livestreamed performance (the first 6 scrolls), played here at 2-20x normal speed.
Exhibition text by Mina Rastgu.
Read the review: “Grounding: States of Gender”: Persian calligraphy documents memoir of womanhood in Iran. Written by Incé Husain. Antler River Media Co-op
With generous support from: Department of Visual Arts, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations, Department of Languages and Cultures, Department of Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies.
Documentation: Dickson Bou, artLAB PreparatorAT THE EDGE: REVOLUTION
Curated by Katelyn Halter
artLAB Gallery Intern
Exhibition: January 9 – 29, 2026
Thursday, January 8 from 4–6PM
Cohen Commons
This exhibition revolves around the fight for peace in a world filled with conflict. From struggles of individuality amidst rapidly changing political climates to humanity's efforts to make the world a better, kinder place, AT THE EDGE: REVOLUTION provides viewers the opportunity to see the current state of today's world through an artistic lens.
Documentation: Dickson Bou, artLAB PreparatorEmbassy Cultural House
Not/For the Money
Publication Launch
January 22, 2026 from 4 - 6 PM
Cohen Commons, JLVAC
Image:Chimtou gold coin hoard, Bardo Museum, Tunis, Tunisia
Photo credit: Ron Benner, 2024
The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is pleased to launch its most recent publication Not/For the Money, in partnership with Western University's Department of Visual Arts. Not/For the Money is an international online group exhibition that highlights contributions by artists and cultural workers that examines themes related to money, capital, and value.
This publication is ECH's 10th publication since its relaunch in 2020 and has been designed by Olivia Mossuto, Coordinating Editor of the ECH, and is printed in an edition of 500 copies, full colour, 52 pages.
Money is a very urgent issue for many artists. An aspect of this issue is the general public’s inability to value the arts and cultural workers’ vital role and impact within any community. There is a lack of understanding in the way cultural workers survive and build meaningful lives, often with a minimum of resources. The issue of money, the impact of economic disparity, and insecurity dominates many of our lives. Without a stable income, most people struggle to afford basic necessities that are required for quality of life.
The theme of money is addressed frequently within the art world, but usually it is in the context of the art “market,” commercial auctions, and wealthy collectors. Many artists work to imagine and engender new relationships, value systems, and ways of being. As journalist Eric Reguly wrote in The Globe and Mail business section, “You don’t necessarily need buckets of money to succeed. Sometimes imagination and the courage to break the rules can do the trick.”
Not/For the Money includes contributions by Ron Benner, Karl Beveridge, Lily Cho, Matthew Dawkins, Holly English, Soheila Esfahani, Kelly Greene, Jamelie Hassan, SF Ho, Michael Maranda, Alistair MacKinnon, Patrick Mahon, David Merritt, Mohamed Monaiseer, Sheri Osden Nault, Wanda Nanibush, Shelley Niro, Claudia Sambo, Ruth Strebe, and Jeff Thomas. This ECH project has been organized by Ron Benner, Jamelie Hassan, Olivia Mossuto, and Mireya Seymour.
FALL 2025
AJE24
Exhibition: November 13 – December 4, 2025
Thursday, November 13 from 6–8PM
People’s Choice voting: 6-7PM
AJE Award Announcements: 7:15PM
artLAB Gallery
Celebrating twenty-four years the "Annual Juried Exhibition" continues to be one of the Department of Visual Arts most highly anticipated undergraduate exhibitions. This diverse show supports the production of new work made in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, print, video, and photography. Exhibited works were selected by a professional jury who consider creativity, concept, materiality and technique. This year’s show is indicative of the resilience and dedication our students continue to demonstrate.
Design by Stefania Dragalin, artLAB Gallery Intern.
Carbon Flurry
Curated by Imogen Clendinning
Danielle Petti, Racquel Rowe, Emelie Robertson and Behnaz Fatemi
Exhibition: November 13 – December 4, 2025
Thursday, November 13 from 6–8PM
Cohen Commons
In Carbon Flurry, artists Danielle Petti, Racquel Rowe, Emelie Robertson and Behnaz Fatemi conduct new creative interventions and experimentation as they animate the engineered material biochar. Created using a process of pyrolysis--a chemical decomposition of matter through heat--biochar is a material remnant of waste management technologies that seek to mitigate climate change, by capturing carbon and storing it in soil for hundreds or thousands of years. In Carbon Flurry, the artists respond to the agency of biochar, allowing the material to take on new layers of meaning beyond its utility as the biproduct of waste. Petti, Rowe, Robertson and Fatemi emphasize the affectual and tactile qualities of its form, as well as the potentiality of biochar as matter; how it abstracts geologic time, fossilizing abundant carbon-emitting chemicals and holding them in stasis.
The More Elegant and Graceful Plant
Exhibition: October 9 – October 30, 2025
Reception: Thursday, October 9 from 6–8PM
artLAB Gallery, JLVAC
Curated by Dr. Cody Barteet and Natalie Scola
This exhibition features works by Jamelie Hassan, Ron Benner, Olivia Mossuto, Steve Sabella, Carole Conde’ & Karl Beveridge, Julio Jorge Celis Polanco and archival materials from Western Archives and Special Collections and The Dr. Laurie L. Consaul Herbarium. Music for the exhibition is shared courtesy of the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission (DACT).
Botanical art captures the worlds plants inhabit and the hands that study them. For centuries, artists have turned to plants not only as subjects to be studied and represented, but also as materials - pigments, dyes, and papers drawn from the natural world. These works map how plants were collected, named, and carried across continents. At the same time, they root us in gardens and communities, revealing how plants have cultivated knowledge, beauty, and belonging. Bringing together archival materials and contemporary art, this exhibition invites reflection on the intertwined histories of empire and science, and on the role of plants in shaping both past and future environments.
Support for this exhibition is provided by Western Research.
Documentation by Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparatorreframing STEM
Exhibition: October 9 – October 30, 2025
Reception: Thursday, October 9 from 6–8PM
Cohen Commons, JLVAC
featuring works by: alexandra molenkamp, ambar kaushik, claire huizenga, elyse hughes, ellie marie smith, emily jane margaret taylor, fong lam nicole iun, jamie vojvodin, jennah hynds, karam bhuee, klay van lankveld, laura clavijo gutierrez, lauren grace zeleny, leo hodgson, matthais leon hayes, miaka duan fredin, parisa lahooty, soraya patel, sofia isabel mendoza martinez, sydney elizabeth norton, urvi uppal, vanesa lares diez, violet dieroff, zoe mckeon-shaw, wilson atterson
the history of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is often told as a linear ascent, a sequence of singular discoveries attributed to a narrow pantheon of celebrated men. yet this narrative is less a neutral chronicle of progress than a frame: constructed, rehearsed, and institutionalized to eclipse entire constellations of knowledge. reframing STEM intervenes in this story, foregrounding women whose contributions fracture the myth of the solitary genius and reveal science as a profoundly collective, contingent, and contested pursuit.
developed by the students of ah2690f: art and science unbound, the exhibition bridges historical research and creative inquiry to illuminate the intellectual labour of women in STEM across centuries and geographies. together, these projects form a constellation that resists linear historiography, instead orbiting around a pluralized understanding of innovation.
to “reframe” is not merely to recover what was forgotten, but to interrogate the epistemological architectures that produced absence in the first place. the works on view ask how disciplinary boundaries, institutional gatekeeping, and cultural bias have shaped whose knowledge counts as scientific truth. by entwining rigorous archival research with speculative and imaginative response, students invite audiences to not only remember these women but to reconsider the very frameworks through which knowledge, and its authority, is produced.
reframing STEM opens onto larger questions: what might science become when its history is told not through the lone voice of invention but through a chorus of minds, each embedded in its own time, culture, and ecology of thought? what new possibilities unfold when we acknowledge science as a site of entanglement—of cross-cultural transmissions, embodied insights, and cosmological wonder? by situating women as vital participants in shaping STEM, this exhibition does not simply fill historical lacunae; it insists on a reimagining of how we conceive knowledge itself: relational, interstellar, and in constant motion.
Documentation by Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery PreparatorMid-Autumn (Moon) Festival
Organized by Yan Zhou, Curator-in-Residence
Wednesday, September 17th from 4-6:30PM
Digital Creativity Lab (VAC 137).
In this project, we explore the ecology of the diverse cultures and histories of diaspora communities, foregrounding their role as caretakers and warriors, upholding justice and solidarity with both local and home countries in their shared struggles against environmental, social, and political injustice wherever they live and prosper.
As part of the community engagement components, the “Diaspora Kitchen” program organizes events that bring together local and international communities to share food, stories, memories, and works. In the first “Diaspora Kitchen” event, we will celebrate the Mid-Autumn (Moon) Festival.
The event will include three activities:
1: Mia Ouyang, a mathematician and visiting scholar at Western University, will lead the mooncake sharing and moon cake dice game (The Moon Festival Bóbǐng Game). This local tradition is connected to the complex history of Taiwan and mainland China, as well as to the ancient Chinese civil service examination system.
2: Andy Patton, a painter and a poet, who is an alumnus of Visual Arts at Western, will read the poem “Spring River in the Flower Moon Night” by Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ruoxu. Andy said this poem is “the one poem I would save from the universal wreckage if all of China’s great poetry was being destroyed.”
3: We will screen a short film, titled “Qingbuliang & Tabbouleh” (تشينج بو ليانج & تبولة).: In the film, displaced Syrian children and their families in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon and migrant workers’ children in Haikou City, Hainan Island, China, met online and shared their favorite food: the Hainan Island fruit bowl “qingbuliang” and the Middle Eastern salad “tabbouleh”, during the 4th Children’s Art Festival of Kindergarten Without Walls in Haikou, China in August 2025. During the screening, we will also share “Qingbuliang & Tabbouleh”.
Documentation by Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator
liminalenergyzerosignalstilldevilobject
Natasha Beaudoin, Eric Cameron, Sebastian Evans, Jennifer Hamilton, Moira Hayes, Cassie Packham, Emelie Robertson
Exhibition: September 4 – September 28, 2025
Reception: Saturday, September 27 from 2-4PM
artLAB Gallery, JLVAC
We occupy an entangled circuitry of institutional connections and nodes, a shared bandwidth, where disparate practices hum, flicker and interfere.
At the midpoint of their academic journey, candidates of the 2026 Master of Fine Arts program come together to explore themes and mediums ranging from the natural and the haunted to painting and video. This exhibition is not curated. It is not a thesis, nor a resolution. Each work in this show is a signal: sometimes clear, sometimes scrambled. Together they build a constellation of transmissions that do not seek to align but rather to co-exist. The artists have chosen not to resolve their differences, but to amplify the static between them.
Instead of a curated narrative, this exhibition offers a linkage, a connective tissue made of tension, refusal and resonance. The artists invite viewers to tune in, sit with the noise, and find meaning in the gaps.
Documentation: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator
Human Impressions: Traces from the Western Print Archives
Exhibition: September 4 – September 28, 2025
Reception: Saturday, September 27 from 2-4PM
Cohen Commons, JLVAC
Curated by Jennifer Hamilton
Image(s): Laura Payne, N. Schlesak and Dan Vogel
The multiple exists to disseminate—and from that, archives emerge. This exhibition features a selection from the Department of Visual Art’s print collection at Western University, showcasing work completed over the past 50 years. These alumni artworks highlight the human experience embedded within the technical processes of printmaking. The human form is embodied within these selected works, showing a historical collaboration between machines and the individual.
This exhibition attempts to challenge critiques of human authenticity within a reproduction while highlighting a printshop’s ability to create a community within any arts institution. The prints chosen for this exhibition include examples from each decade with a varied selection of printmaking, including relief print, intaglio, lithography and serigraphy.
Documentation: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator
