At Treaty Space Gallery, The Best of Both Worlds: 50 Years of Art by Leonard Paul gathers work from across a long career and lets it speak with a quiet confidence. Rivers churn through rock. Birds cling to the rough sides of trees. A wolf looks straight out from the frame. Moving through the gallery, you begin to notice the steady hand behind it all. Paul returns again and again to the living world around him, studying it closely and translating what he sees with patience.

Realism has always been central to Paul’s practice. While many conversations about Indigenous art have focused on symbolism or graphic traditions, Paul followed a different instinct. He was drawn to careful observation and to the painters who worked in that tradition. The works in this exhibition reflect that choice. They show an artist who trusts what he sees and who has spent decades learning how to render it faithfully.

When we sat down to talk about the exhibition, Paul reflected on what it felt like to begin exhibiting in the 1970s. Indigenous artists were rarely visible in the Canadian art world then, particularly in Atlantic Canada. Paul remembers feeling largely on his own at the time, guided mostly by his own ability and curiosity. Over the course of our conversation, he spoke candidly about those early years, about debates around authenticity in Indigenous art, and about the challenge of sustaining a creative life across five decades.

When you began exhibiting in the 1970s, how were Indigenous artists positioned within the Canadian art world? How visible were you?

Not very visible. Not very visible at all. When I came in, I felt like I was all by myself. And it really hasn’t changed much. 

Did that make you feel lonely? Or did you feel unique?

I felt unique. Yes, I felt unique.

Without sounding conceited, I felt I was blessed with a very extraordinary ability to paint, and that ability spoke for me. It opened doors for me.

Over the decades, have you seen any shifts in how institutions approach Indigenous art?

It was very provincial, if they did approach it at all. And that provincialism tended to centre Ontario or the West, not Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island or places like that. In one way we were secondary.

But thank goodness that was the start. We had Norval Morrisseau. We had Bill Reid from out West. People started to take notice.

I felt a little strange in some ways, because I wasn’t painting like they did. In those days I was painting realism. I was more comfortable with people like Alex Colville. I knew him as a good friend. I also knew Ken Danby. I was in that circle with them. I would be on the phone talking to James Lansdowne, the great bird painter. I just wanted to know more. He was so helpful. I never met him, but we had long phone conversations.

So in a way, that kept me at a distance from what people thought of as First Nations art.

There’s often discussion around “authenticity” in Indigenous art. Has that word felt useful or limiting to you?

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, we were asking, “What makes Native art? Who makes Native art? Do the artists have to be First Nations?” The answer we came to was yes.

I sat on the national art board for eleven years: SCANA, the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry. We became aware that a lot of people were coming in and identifying as Métis or Inuit when they were not. It became a kind of hodgepodge, and that got in the way.

Through SCANA, we were trying to establish criteria to solidify First Nations creativity, grounded in Native ancestry. We were trying to protect it.

What has been the most difficult aspect of sustaining a creative practice? Has that struggle changed over time?

Today I see emerging artists coming out and saying, yes, we are artists, and we’re not part of white society. We have our own identities, our own methodologies to create these wonderful designs. They’re part of our culture.

The question has always been what’s the criteria? And we’re still going through that today. We’re still trying to find ways to oust the fakes and to concentrate on people who are First Nations and haven’t yet had a chance.

We have more venues now, which is good. International venues too. I’ve shown in France and Germany on behalf of First Nations movements. That was good.

But it was a quagmire in those days. Terrible.

I’ll give you an example. Not too long ago, we went into a museum in Sherbrooke. There was a woman—white—talking to a group of people about her paintings in a Native pavilion. We overheard someone ask if she was Native. She said no.

Her husband had been a legitimate First Nations artist. He passed away. She picked up the paintbrush and painted like him and was selling the work as Native art.

I told the curator, “You’re misleading people. She’s not First Nations.” The curator said, “Her husband was. That’s good enough for us.”

That’s the kind of thing we had to deal with.

Have you ever struggled with creative blocks? What’s the most difficult part of creating a piece for you?

I was very lucky. I opened doors, but I never went into all the rooms.

By that I mean I didn’t go into symbolic, geometric Native design. I was comfortable in realism. You saw my powwow dancers. They’re realism, but they’re Native subjects. That was good enough for me.

I’ve always been honest. I would tell people, I don’t paint symbols. I don’t paint geometric forms. That’s not my path. And people accepted that because I was up front from the beginning.

When I go into First Nations communities, I tell them, if you have a vision in your mind of what a Native artist looks like, I may not fit it.

I’m influenced by cause and effect. You are what you eat. You are where you grow up. I was open-minded to the art I loved…and that was realism.

Does institutional recognition change how you understand your own work?

Yes. It can. You can beat yourself up if you don’t step back and look at what you’ve done. Sometimes you have to take a few steps back and say, look at this. That’s important.

After fifty years of art-making, is there anything unresolved? Anything you haven’t tried yet?

The fifty years came to me in a funny way. My daughter turns fifty this June. I realized: I’ve reached my jubilee. Fifty long years.

There is one thing that hurts me a bit. When I sell a painting and it’s hanging on someone’s wall, I’ll never see it again. That’s the part that’s hard.

What I would like to do now is enter the world of commercial art, writing books and illustrating them. Mass-producing my originals through printmaking. I would love to write children’s books and illustrate them, especially Mi’kmaw stories. I’ve never tried it yet.

People ask me when I was happiest in my career. I tell them I was about fourteen years old. That was the happiest time. I would like to reach that happiness again.

I think about drawing cartoons, doing animation, illustrating children’s storybooks. I think that will bring me back to that fourteen-year-old.

I haven’t done it yet. But I want to.

Rooted in the forests of Cap Rouge, Donica Larade’s art practice highlights native flora and fauna and encourages conversations around conservation, ecology action, and queer experience. Donica’s ability to capture fleeting moments in nature’s moments of kismet is unique. Whether they’re exploring a fresh flush of edible maritime mushrooms, studying the anatomy of a Highland fairy, or embedding sea rocket and a gannet wing into a cyanotype quilt, her attention feels exact and alive. Her unique ability to articulate a moment shines through.

Larade comes from an Acadian family displaced in the Expulsion, and the stories of that time live on in her art and profound relationship to the Cape Breton Highlands. Her mediums shift with the seasons, but an environmental throughline ties the work together.

In the wild, you’ll find Donica carrying a large tote bag full of various art supplies: some gouache, a well-worn watercolour palette, acrylic paint markers, or even cyanotype chemicals—she’s primed to create at a moment’s notice. A self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades, their practice moves fluidly across materials, often drawing on second-hand finds and objects from the natural world. Donica’s work reminds us that realism doesn’t have to omit mysticism and storytelling.

Kyra Lambert: Tell me a little about your arts practice as currently is and where you tend to draw influence from.

Donica Larade: My process of creating has always been chaotic and unpredictable. Everything in your life has the ability to inspire art, especially the unexpected or mundane. Some concepts creep up and grow slowly over time, and some hit me like a freight train. I’ll be watching a movie or in the grocery store and frantically scribbling something down in my notes app. Sketchbooks then help me flesh ideas out and explore what medium to communicate them with. Themes I’ve been exploring recently involve mythology, philosophy, symbolism, death and natural cycles, local plants and animals, social justice movements, and generally the whimsy of the natural world. 

KL: How does your Chéticamp home base influence your arts perspective and practice? 

DL: Cape Breton is one of the only places I know where being an artist is taken seriously as a career path. Growing up spending time in Chéticamp, I was influenced by theatre productions, musicals, dances, and festivals that showed me art was culturally essential. As a kid, I walked door to door selling my drawings because I felt confident people around me valued art. A mix of wonderful landscapes, island artists, seriously funny people, and a rich culture that celebrates expression has been a winning formula for me.

KL: What pieces of folklore from Cape Breton do you hold close? 

DL: The fairies of Cape Breton Island are the creatures I’m most drawn to in regards to island mythology. The folklore I’ve most heavily focused on in my previous work has explored visual symbolism and tales associated with fairies. Something that compels me most about fairy lore is their presence throughout various communities found on Cape Breton Island, such as the Mi’kmaq, Gaelic, and Acadian people. It’s very telling of their cultural impact and powerful abilities. 

KL: All art, yours especially, “keeps record” of species and stories around our immediate environment. What drew you to this type of art practice?

DL: I think what first drew me to this type of note taking was in part my own discovery and curiosity for the species that lived locally. Observation and pattern recognition is a part of both the scientific and artistic process. I constantly traipse around with my nose inside guidebooks or the apps eBird and iNaturalist. The realization that many people are unaware of some of the amazing species in their own backyard and have that same curiosity pushed me into this style of highlighting them in my art. Flying squirrels, purple coral mushrooms, and saw-whet owls are only some of the incredible, unique species that people might not associate with the East Coast. 

KL: You have a very special ability in connecting people to the wealth of species in their immediate environment. Do you have any stories that come to mind when you think about introducing people to local invertebrates, or mushrooms? (Connecting people to their environment can be so empowering and supports interdependence, accessibility in education through the arts.)

DL: I think it can be difficult to choose one specific memory because of the way it’s completely integrated into my life and daily activities. However, some of my most memorable experiences in scientific communication have been with children. They are the most curious, ask the best questions, and hold the most unbridled joy. In our interactions, I often find myself thinking more creatively, pushing the limits of my own understanding, and being challenged into trying to explain complex genetic theory to an eight-year-old asking about butterflies. It’s incredibly rewarding to support young people on their own journeys of understanding the world around them. 

KL: How do you interact with the wider Nova Scotia arts scene? Where is your place in it? 

DL: Coming from a non-traditional art background has in turn led to a non-traditional relationship with the Nova Scotia art community. At times, I’ve felt isolated as an artist because of my lack of formal education. It can feel difficult to make connections and obtain the right resources without the formal structure that school can offer. Thankfully, living in small artistic towns like Chéticamp, Seaforth, and Antigonish, and taking part in residencies and festivals, has been deeply healing for my imposter syndrome. These experiences, as well as making connections with other artists and mentors, have allowed me to mitigate my feelings of insecurity in my art practice and feel like an essential piece in our art world. It takes all kinds in the arts, and my unique journey and experiences created my own niche in the scene. 

KL: How does art influence ecologically minded spaces? Is there a specific conservation effort in NS you’d like to call attention to? 

DL: Traditionally, art and science have always been entwined in a way in which one was rarely found without the other. Note taking, sketching, or illustrating are an essential resource in the sciences to help convey information. Looking back at extraordinary naturalists like Maria Sibylla Merian, Ernst Haeckel, or Anna Atkins, I think the relationship between science and art was much more widely acknowledged and appreciated before the twenty-first century than it is today. For me, the beauty of illustration and its role in the sciences is to communicate difficult or interesting concepts, advocate on behalf of species and the environment, and celebrate the mysticality of nature. There are too many amazing conservation efforts to mention just one, but CPAWS, Nature Nova Scotia, and the Ecology Action Centre offer great resources for conservation work being done in your area!

We want to hear from writers, artists, and critics who are paying attention to what’s happening across Atlantic Canada. That might mean spending time with an artist’s work, spending time with a show, or following an idea that keeps unfolding. We’re interested in writing that feels close to the work and rooted in the Atlantic region.

We publish features, profiles, and exhibition reviews.

We also commission online-only pieces throughout the year. These can be a good way to respond to something more immediate, whether that’s an exhibition, event, or a conversation that’s still developing.

As always, we prioritize work that challenges white supremacy and colonialism. Our approach is grounded in anti-oppression and anti-racism, and we support Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, Queer positivity, and gender diversity.

Pitch deadline: May 8, 2026
Draft deadline: June 10, 2026
Release date: September 15, 2026

You can find writers guidelines here.

Submit your pitch through this link.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Andrea at publisher@visualarts.ns.ca

In mouth them like words, Angela Henderson welcomes viewers into a space that feels quiet, careful, and a little mysterious. On view at StFX Art Gallery from February 25 to April 4, the exhibition brings together graphite drawings nestled within free-standing wooden structures that subtly shape how you move through the gallery. Her line work shifts between intention and instinct, between the clarity of design and forms that seem to rise up from somewhere harder to name. The installation feels like a living archive, one that asks you to slow your pace, come closer, and spend time with images that do not resolve all at once. In this conversation, she reflects on ambiguity, restraint, and the conditions she creates to allow something unexpected to surface.

Your title, mouth them like words, feels tactile and embodied. Where did that phrase come from?

A lot of the titles I’ve used in the past have come from poetic references—Anne Carson and Forugh Farrokhzad—but not this one.

My partner is a poet, and reading his work influences me. I think I’m inspired by the embodied quality of words on the page—language in any place, really. Lately, a lot of my work has resulted in hybrid forms that are hard to name. I was thinking about the mouth as the place where we speak language. There’s this visceral, mouth-like quality that feels close to naming but also to being unable to name.

If I were to think about a mouthful of ambiguity—how would I name it? I don’t know. That’s kind of where the title comes from.

Many of the forms feel pared down, almost elemental. What draws you to that economy of line?

My background is in design, particularly architectural and spatial design. I’m interested in material quality and structure. Often my drawing practice veers toward the maximal—more and more and more—but the structures that hold those forms feel like metaphysical devices. They’re frameworks that hold ambiguous life forms or images.

There’s a contrast there. The structures are drawings in and of themselves. I imagine them as part of a lifelong system—an ongoing design and development of these forms. They’re members of a kind of evolving structure.

Where did this body of work feel most difficult?

There’s always a lot of fastidiousness in what I do—time spent. In the drawings, especially, I’ve developed a practice that tries to create the conditions for something meditative, where the subconscious can come forward. It becomes about drawing and witnessing what emerges.

That sounds good, but often it’s frustrating. Creating those conditions isn’t always easy. It depends on mood, on the day.

I’m also a parent. There’s guilt—long periods spent alone are when that process becomes most accessible. Sometimes I feel guilty for that. Other times I feel like I’m not spending enough time with myself. It’s a difficult balance.

Do you think of these works as contemporary, or as belonging to a longer timeline of mark-making and symbolic practice?

Both. There’s something pre-verbal in the work. Through the process I described, forms emerge that are hard to name. I relate that to ancient or pre-verbal knowledge.

At the same time, practices like tarot or divination tools project a way forward. They depart from rationalist binaries—right/wrong, good/bad—that we see increasingly in society. There’s hopefulness in ambiguous or mysterious tools. They propose alternative ways of seeing and naming.

How do orientation and scale shape the viewer’s experience?

You have to look at my drawings with dedication. Often your body comes very close to the paper. The viewer is rewarded by spending time.

In this exhibition, I thought about ambulating—about circumambulation, which suggests ritual or spiritual practice. Ambulation isn’t a straight line; it’s circulatory. I also tried to insert my own body into the forms, literally, through scale—heights, widths.

I wanted to create a scaled environment that slows the viewer down and brings them close to the surface.

How does a drawing begin for you? And how do you know it’s finished?

A drawing begins as curiosity or observation. I often work with found forms. I might trace something—blind contour, physical objects, or carbon tracing. The reference point is intuitive, often coming from walking, being in nature, observing trees, leaves, insects—things outside my window.

I’ve also worked with psychoanalytic practice for about eight years. I use tools that access subconscious thought—active imagination, for example. 

I don’t use erasers. The drawing evolves. I follow what emerges.

As for finished, it’s a feeling. When there’s enough depth and complexity, I feel it’s complete.

The works hover between abstraction and something almost legible. Are you interested in that threshold?

Yes. Ambiguity is a goal in my work. I value holding multiple things at once without resolution.

I’m interested in how images unfold and contain many references. I love the work of Marcel Dzama, for example. I feel a trajectory toward identifying figures or reference points that could develop a narrative quality.

How did the installation shape the meaning of the work?

When I installed the show, I realized I had designed the wooden forms to meet and facilitate the drawings. I imagine those structures returning in future exhibitions to house new drawings—like a growing archive.

I was trying to create a quiet archive. The line work and forms reference botanical drawing—the way we archive and document plant or animal life.

Can you speak about your material choices—graphite, coloured pencil, mylar?

Many materials come from my design background. I use CAD for structural designs. The washi paper I work with is incredibly responsive to graphite—it holds it in nuanced ways. At times it feels like a dead end, but it does something specific.

In this show I experimented with watercolour paper in the central form. I’m interested in moving toward tracing papers or translucent materials—where drawing becomes more three-dimensional.

The blue pencil comes from architectural construction lines. When plotted, those lines disappear. They’re subtle construction marks.

There’s quietness in the exhibition, but also tension. How do you think about restraint?

My process can be obsessive, right up until the night before installation. I’m always trying to pare things down.

There’s restraint in how the pieces fit together, the structures that tilt and move, almost like flat-packed furniture.

I grew up in a small closed religious community. Dogma is something I’m embedded with but push against. Restraint sometimes comes from setting rules: no colour, one colour, this paper only. Creating conditions through limitation.

There’s much more work that isn’t in the show than is. Sketches upon sketches—my own archive in manila folders.

Do you think of drawing as a form of divination?

I like that idea. Without erasers, drawing becomes like watching clouds. “Oh, there’s an ear—I’ll follow it.” Sometimes I almost speak to it: Why are you here? What are you showing me?

It may sound strange, but I’m trying to draw from subconscious space. Perhaps even from a collective unconscious—the roots under trees, the mycelium.

The divination, if anything, is about creating conditions for unfolding and then letting it happen. Witnessing and participating while trying to quiet the thinking mind.

Everything begins with close observation—botanical forms, trees, leaves, insects. But once that reference is on the page, it departs. The visible is the starting point. Through process, it becomes post-observational—an unfolding.

Ross Nervig is the Editor of Visual Arts News.

By Karin Cope 

Two Pansies, a collaborative exhibition installed at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery during the fall of 2025, featured colourful, whimsical, and deeply serious eco-feminist dialogues in paint, sculpture, video, and performance by two emerging queer artists, Autumn Star and Shay Donovan. An expansive show filled with paired paintings of uncanny figures in luscious colours, performances in animal and flower costumes, and moving, human-sized snail, fish, bird, and spider sculptural forms, Two Pansies makes an argument that queer and trans bodily change is about more than “sex,” “gender,” or “human” morphologies and relationships. It is also about the beauty of emergence and the ways our relationships with one another and the non-human world inspire, move, reveal, and tether us in “laughter, whimsy, shame, and love,” as the Two Pansies video puts it.

Characterizing their show as a “tender archive” of “strange strangers” or emergent beings, artists Shay Donovan and Autumn Star speak of their work as an effort to help nascent forms they encounter while living and making “find their shape” and “come to be at home.” Costumed as lobsters, bees, owls, pansies, or jackalopes, they animate animal and plant stories they have “collected along the way.” Furnished with materials from their own homes and decorated with drafts of paintings found in the show, they also provide access to a domestic space or “home” for the Two Pansies in a side room of the gallery.

Across their performances, Donovan and Star centre care, humour, and fragmentary narrative as methodologies, engaging viewers in the intimate rhythms of a generous and multiple queer life. They also show how colour may function as both camouflage and highlight, offering expansive understandings of what painting is or could be and asking us to look and listen more closely to making and the living world as sources of new queer imaginings.

Full disclosure: As a director of the NSCAD MFA program during part of the time both Donovan and Star were enrolled, I know them well and visited their studios while they were developing this work. I met them in Kjipuktuk/Halifax in late November 2025 to discuss critical aspects of the exhibition.

KARIN COPE: Let’s talk about your title. It nods toward queer histories and iconographies, including the etymological history of the pansy, from its fifteenth-century roots in the French pensée to its early twentieth-century use as a term meaning “effeminate.” How did you find your title, and which came first, the characters or the title?

SHAY DONOVAN: The name for the show came first. Alongside the rich etymological history of the word, we really enjoyed reclaiming the word “pansy” from its modern usage and transforming it into these pansy characters. Because why can’t a being be effeminate and delicate but also powerful and formidable?

KC: Some of the work appears side by side, while other elements, like the film, the Birdfish sculpture, and the Pansies’ “home,” feel fully collaborative. How did your collaboration begin, and how is working together different from working alone? 

AUTUMN STAR: Shay and I have been close in proximity in our creative spaces for a few years now, so working together was a natural evolution. We met during our time in the MFA at NSCAD, where we were assigned studios next to each other. Early on, while I was making a giant snail sculpture, we learned that we both have a shared enthusiasm for bugs. I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes light up as much as Shay’s did while talking about cicadas, so we co-curated a group show called Swarm, all about the insights of insects. Two Pansies was another chance to combine some of our headspace to create things that I doubt either of us would have manifested alone.

KC: What is the role of the house, or “pansy safe space,” in relation to the film? You’ve described the show as a “tender archive.” How does the house function as a space of intimacy and care?

AS: The installation for the Pansies’ home functions as an invitation to enter a strange habitat and helped us explore tensions between interior and exterior in queer space. What is shown? What is concealed? I wonder about the fragility of queer archives and efforts at preservation. If you wanted to preserve a pansy for display, you would have to press it in glass, but that estranges its velvety textures and puts them at risk of shattering. A more private option might be pressing the flower between the pages of a book, but then who else gets to see it? The living room and the film are a living archive of the Two Pansies in this moment, filled with art, love, joy, and a gigantic Birdfish.

KC: There is great physicality in this work, from the human and more-than-human scale of the pieces to the gestural marks they record, the precarious balance of the sculptures, and the whole-body performances in the film. You also posit a merging of bodies, species, and genders, visible in the snail sculptures, the Birdfish, and the animal and plant characters in the film, as well as in the melding of plant, animal, mineral, and human forms in your paintings. Can you talk about the vision of the world these interlacings propose, why it matters to see the world, as Emily Dickinson would have it, “slant,” and what kinds of ecological care shape this work in terms of themes and materials?

AS: Using the whole body to create a piece as big or slightly larger than life takes a lot of endurance; we want that energy to bleed into the work. As for the merging of plants, animals, and spirited bodies, these conjoined hybrids show that it takes repeated hovering around the edge of something to get to know it and to see just how circular our connections to life are. And of course, as to materials, we’re recycling all the time! 

SD: I love the space between the slants, the little crevices we can carve out to make room for identity that isn’t one thing or the other. In the film, I moved from depicting entities through painting to embodying them on camera. I had to give myself permission to inhabit the character rather than act as a witness.

KC: Talk to me about colour and materials. Do they build worlds? You’ve described your process as helping these emergences find their shape. Is this queer birth?

AS: Colour is a guiding companion for me. It can be patient when figuring out a composition or rowdy and certain about where the eye should travel. Colours rubbing against each other create visual conversations. I feel like Shay and I have distinct palettes that speak a similar language with different accents.

SD: There comes a time when the material takes over and I’m no longer the conductor but a conduit. If I don’t let that switch happen, the piece feels unresolved. Colour in my paintings is mostly intuitive. Sometimes it comes from memory, but it helps build the world of the work. I imagine what’s happening out of frame as a continuation of what’s visible. Is that a queer birth? Maybe.

KC: In the video, you describe shared affects as “laughter, whimsy, shame, and love.” Why does this particular assemblage matter?

SD: Whimsy often gets mischaracterized as frivolous, but it can be a huge source of joy. We didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, and letting whimsy guide some decisions left room to breathe and have fun. Laughter and whimsy feel internal, while shame and love are often projected from outside. Together, they feel like a common queer experience.

KC: How do you begin a project? How do you know you’re onto something?

AS: Sometimes a piece you think is legless ends up with three legs and six arms. Other times you think something is sturdy and it turns into a fish with wings. We tend to let our hands do the heavy lifting and let the concept follow. Embracing fluidity is important.

SD: It’s hard to tell when something starts walking on its own. Sometimes I don’t know until it’s already out the door and teaching me something.

For example, we’ve been asked a lot about the collaborative Birdfish. It was my first time working on a sculpture that large and alongside someone else. It was inspired by watching ospreys near Lunenburg catch fish. The way they carry fish, held forward and parallel to their bodies, looks almost as if the fish has wings. In a last embrace, the fish is thrust into a different realm. I wonder how they experience that brief hybridity and what it would look like for the fish to have control over that journey.

KC: What have you learned from working together? Would you do it again? What’s next?

SD & AS: This is just a start. We fuel each other with our ambition. It’s exciting to work alongside someone who shares the feeling that there is more to explore. There will be collaborations in our future, and this isn’t the last you’ll see of the Two Pansies.

The first thing you notice is the music, spilling out into the stairway and pulling visitors into a world shaped by movement. That sense of movement runs throughout It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900–1970 and Now, a nationally touring exhibition at the Dalhousie Art Gallery from January to April 2026.

Curated by scholar, artist, and educator Seika Boye, It’s About Time is an archival exhibition that showcases the rich dance histories of Canada’s Black population. Using findings from recorded historical events and new research, Boye explores the power of dance as a form of expression, resistance, sacrifice, and cultural identity. 

“To date, the history of dance within Canada’s Black population is significantly underdocumented,” writes Boye in their artist statement. “Without it, we miss out on so much joy, agency, peaceful gathering en masse, resistance, artistic brilliance, and individual expression. Without it, we are incomplete in our self-knowledge, and so, our potential.”

PREPARATION AS DANCE

The dulcet tones of artists past and present pull you through the door and straight into a space reminiscent of a young adult’s bedroom. 

Clothes pile up in a corner—T-shirts, jackets, skirts, and other fabrics—seemingly tossed aside in the aftermath of a fashion montage you might see in a ’90s rom-com. Some bear Black Panther insignia, others are African kente; some fabrics are soft and diaphanous, others are black and metallic.

Beside the pile of clothes is a crisp white vanity, ready to serve the room’s occupant. A long black do-rag sits on a mannequin head, gemstones sparkling like the stars on the night out the occupant is preparing for. A tower of varied speakers sits in the other corner, filling the space with feel-good music as they get ready. A disco ball spins above, seeding its light across the textured ceiling. 

The three mixed media installations by kay macdonald, titled in this room—at the beginning of the night/at the end of the world, transport viewers into an intimate space where preparation becomes a ritual and the bedroom becomes a liminal space of expression and safety. Here, the act of getting ready becomes a dance of “what it takes to show up, and to be seen,” macdonald writes. 

Over the course of the exhibition, macdonald will periodically activate the space with a live performance, transforming the installation from still life to living ceremony. 

BLACKNESS AS PERFORMANCE

Stepping out of that bedroom, your attention is immediately captured by a bright red curtain to the right. 

Thick, red theatre curtains with carefully—almost reverently—placed pleats frame a painting, like curtains drawing closed after a show. In the centre, a dark-skinned Black woman rests after a dance of some kind. She is visibly tired, eyes downcast as she leans against her dressing table. Her red dancing shoes stand out in a sea of black, browns, and navy backstage. 

By Preston Pavlis and titled when the jig is up, when the act is finished, when the curtain descends, the link between Blackness and performance in this piece feels unavoidable. The dancer’s red shoes are a reference to a 1948 British film The Red Shoes, where a ballerina must choose between her love for dance and her life beyond the stage.  

For me, a Black viewer, the red shoes in the painting symbolize a lack of choice. Just like the protagonist in the film couldn’t remove the shoes, Pavlis’s dancer cannot shed her Blackness. She is forced to perform every day on the stage we call life, eyes critiquing her every move. In the mirror behind her, the reflection stares at the viewer in an accusatory gaze, full of both helplessness and quiet rage. 

Beside the dancer, a bunch of dried flowers rest on the table—a testament to how she has been unable to care for them, and herself. Tenderness, rest, the soft aspects of her life come second to the performance she must put on for the world. The painting is a moment of vulnerability, and the stage becomes a space where “endings, pressure and self-belief must be continually negotiated,” writes Pavlis. 

CELEBRATION AS LIBERATION

As you venture deeper into the exhibition, a spread of black-and-white photographs lines the walls on either side of the room.

On the right side is Allen D. Crooks’s Lose yourself to dance,most of which was photographed during a fiftieth-anniversary family celebration and vow renewal at the East Preston Recreation Centre. The photos pull you into a room full of joy, laughter, and celebration. Glistening suits and well-worn floors set the scene, as family members—old and young, anonymous and identified—strut their stuff, skirts swaying with the music, arms raised in jubilation. 

On the left side, a series of photographs that catch your eye are the Grange Road Dances. The photos depict scenes from social dances, house parties, concerts, and recitals in 1950s Canada. The black-and-white photos do nothing to dull the liveliness of the party. 

In one of the photographs, a crowd of Black youth dance together, happily moving to the beat of musicians, while at the perimeter, a group of white attendees look on, seemingly out of place. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of unapologetic Black joy existing despite white discomfort. 

While both sides of the aisle depict different events, the theme is clear: Dance like no one’s watching. 

In a world where Blackness puts a target on your back, dance becomes a radical form of liberation. This was especially true in the 1950s, when social dances were one of the few sources for “positive images of Canada’s Black population,” the exhibition text explains.  

BLACK DANCE, DARK HISTORY

Moving through the gallery, it becomes clear that celebration is only one part of the story. Behind glass, objects from nineteenth-century minstrel shows sit uncomfortably still. A book on stage makeup is opened to instructions for racial caricature; beside it, a small tin of “Negro Black” face paint, with a detailed visual guide and colour palette to achieve the desired “ethnic complexions.”

A visitor’s voice cuts through the gallery: “People used to buy this?”

The answer, painfully, is yes.

These materials remind viewers that dance has also been used as a tool for ridicule and exclusion—a distortion of Black and racialized bodies designed to entertain through dehumanization. That this history exists alongside scenes of joy, ceremony, and resistance is not a contradiction but part of the exhibition’s insistence on telling the whole story. 

STILL BLACK, STILL DANCING

Just beyond this display, a small projection room offers another kind of history: short films and testimonials from dancers, neighbours, and students speaking about what dance has meant in their lives. 

As archival footage and interviews flicker across the screen, the exhibition feels less like recorded history and more like something alive—an immortal rhythm carried forward through memory.

I sink into the cushions, the tension I carried from earlier leaving my body, as I watch Ethel Bruneau merrily “hoofing” along to the beat. 

Indeed, it’s about time we had a show like this. 

Visual Arts News turns 50 this year. We want to mark the milestone by widening the circle.

We’re inviting writers, artists, and critics to pitch smart, generous stories that deepen conversations around Atlantic art and culture. Surprise us. Challenge us. Bring forward practices, places, and people that haven’t had enough light. Profiles, features, and exhibition reviews are all welcome.

We especially encourage pitches that unsettle the defaults of the art world and rethink how stories are told. We prioritize work that pushes back against white supremacy and colonialism. We are committed to anti-oppression and anti-racism, and we support Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, Queer positivity, and gender diversity.

If you’re new to pitching, that’s okay—introduce yourself, share a few lines about your idea and why you’re the one to write it. If you’re a seasoned contributor, bring us the piece you’ve been itching to do.

Key dates

• Pitch deadline: October 29, 2025
• Draft deadline:  December 5, 2025
• Issue release: March 15, 2026 

For more information

Submit your pitch here. 

Fifty years in, we’re still hungry for new voices and fresh ways of seeing. 

Help us shape the next chapter.

We will also consider pitches for our online-only content. These stories are published to our website in months when no print publication is issued. There are eight to ten online-only articles each calendar year. This can be a great opportunity to cover more time-sensitive shows, events or subjects.

Contact Andrea at publisher@visualarts.ns.ca or Ross at editor@visualarts.ns.ca with any questions. 

Sculptor Sarah Maloney’s idea of a pleasure ground is a little more literal. It’s the title of her most recent solo exhibition, on display at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, until October 12, 2025. Pleasure Ground investigates both the body and sexuality (pleasure) as well as plants and other elements of the natural world (ground).

This exhibition has been seven years in the making. Maloney first started looking for interested collaborators back in 2018 and connected with Art Windsor-Essex, a gallery in Windsor, Ontario, and Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in Halifax. The two organizations took on a curatorial role, and with support from Canadian Heritage’s Museum Assistance program, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery also came on board as a venue. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, and everything stopped. 

Leadership at the galleries changed hands, but they were still excited about the potential of getting Maloney’s work into their spaces, so in October of 2023, Pleasure Ground finally opened. 

Pleasure Ground is not a retrospective but does include pieces from all stages of Maloney’s career. The earliest piece is from 1993, when she was pregnant with her first child, and the most recent is a group of three pieces from 2021. The works in the exhibition are all vastly different from each other in size, shape, and medium and yet surprisingly cohesive in theme.

Throughout Pleasure Ground, Maloney challenges colonialism and the sneaky ways it has crept into every corner of our lives. The titular sculpture, completed in 2019, consists of a group of roughly four- to six-inch-tall, bronze Northern pitcher plants, carnivorous plants often found in bogs in Maloney’s native Nova Scotia. The plants, divorced from their natural habitat and placed in a gallery, become less recognizable as flora, calling to mind instead something vaguely suggestive of genitalia. 

The extraction of native plants and their placement in an institution are ideas Maloney toys with in other works as well. She challenges the colonial practice of collecting exotic plants through embroidery in her series of three titled Collect-Arrange (2021). These large-scale pieces are of embroidered vases, all from the British Museum collection, filled with flowers based on historical botanical illustrations. In the frame, Maloney has sculpted native Nova Scotia flowers in plaster. This both explores the exploitation due to colonialism and challenges the notion of “women’s work.” 

In her artist statement, Maloney writes, “needlework historically was a way for wealthy women to pass the time, they too were part of a collection kept at home while men went off to explore. I am drawn to embroidery because its history, process, and materiality speak to both traditional and contemporary ideas of women’s work.”

It is very difficult to choose which works to highlight, as they are all incredibly intricate and vibrant, humming with symbolism and patriarchal dissent. I could highlight Vertebrae, Sacrum, Coccyx (1998–1999), a collection of knitted organs that were created during Maloney’s second pregnancy, or Skin (2003–2012), a life-sized, beaded skin-suit that took nine years to complete. Then there’s her Reflection series (2010), which combines found furniture with bronze sculptures of orchids, their sexuality hidden behind a mirror image, and the most visually striking piece in the exhibition, Water Level (2012–2016), which reinterprets a pond landscape through a feminist lens by casting water lilies and lily pads in bronze and raising them up to eye level so you can walk through, raising questions of who is placed in view and why. 

One of the interesting things about a touring exhibition is seeing how the different gallery spaces interplay with the work. At the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Pleasure Ground is divided into two separate spaces. One is upstairs, with incredibly high ceilings, bright lights, and white gallery walls. The other, downstairs, is darker, with dark green walls and focused lighting. The exhibition spaces lend themselves to very different themes; the pieces in the basement room, whether intentionally or not, have more of a sexual overtone, highlighting the feminist elements of her work.

This decision, however, might lead viewers to miss some of Maloney’s work. The two rooms are separated by a staircase and a hallway, but there is no signage indicating that each space is just one part of a larger exhibition, or where to find the other half. This is more of an institutional critique than a curatorial one, but I could have easily left having only seen half of the show if I hadn’t decided to keep browsing the gallery.

Even if you accidentally only see half of Pleasure Ground (which you shouldn’t, now that you know it’s in two spaces), it would still be an intellectual and visual feast for your eyes. Pleasure Ground was exhibited at Art Windsor-Essex, then Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, and is at the Beaverbrook until October 12, 2025, when it will then head to the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. 

Jericho Knopp is a writer and arts administrator based in Menahqesk (Saint John), New Brunswick, whose work explores narratives surrounding beauty, nostalgia, and mental illness. Her practice is primarily non-fiction based, but she also dabbles in poetry and prose. Her journalism has appeared in the CBC, CreatedHere, Visual Arts News, the Telegraph-Journal, and the Georgia Straight. Her narrative non-fiction has received support from artsnb and THIRD SHIFT festival, and her fiction has appeared in the FLOURISH Festival zine, and It’s Burning Off. She currently works as the programming director for ArtsLink NB.

In the fall of 2024, the Treaty Space Gallery, whose mandate is to highlight artwork that responds to the UN’s declaration of the Decade of Indigenous Languages, themes of cultural revitalization, and notions of treaty, relocated from NSCAD’s Port Campus to 1887 Granville Street, a former bridal shop. The new location is part NSCAD’s Fountain Campus, formerly the Victoria School of Art and Design, founded in 1887 by Anna Leonowens, Mrs. Jeremiah Kenny, and sisters Ella and Eliza Ritchey to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. With wood floors, white walls, and Roman pillars, the Treaty Space Gallery is a gathering space for Indigenous students and welcomes all treaty people who come together in community.

Amalkewinu’k (The Dancers), curated by Prosper and Pardy, which ran in Halifax from February 4 to 14, 2025, illustrates the evolution of Mi’kmaw regalia by inviting viewers into an exhibition space that features studio portraits of Mi’kmaw community members in regalia, black-and-white archival images, and three pieces of regalia–a beaded cap, a headdress, and a Mi’kmaw jacket. Amalkewinu’k opens at Acadia University in fall 2025 and runs throughout October in celebration of Mi’kmaq History Month. The exhibition will also open at StFX Art Gallery in fall 2026 as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the gallery. 

Amalkewinu’k is the vision of curators Prosper, an L’nu artist and health care professional from Eskasoni First Nation, and Pardy, a photojournalist and documentary photographer, and is a collaborative community project honouring the transformation of Mi’kmaw regalia.

Presenting distinctively Mi’kmaw regalia through portraiture is central to the exhibition. Keeping the focus solely on Mi’kmaw regalia challenges misconceptions and pan-Indigeneity, honours Mi’kmaw artistic heritage, and celebrates past and present community artists, including L’nu Ancestors Once Known, Mi’kmaw youth like Rory Meuse of Membertou First Nation, and Elders like renowned author and educator Dr. Marie Battiste of Potlotek First Nation. 

“The use of ‘L’nu Ancestor Once Known’ was quite intentional on our part and a bit of a critique of museum and art collections. I first saw this practice at the National Art Gallery, but I believe it might have its origins at the AGO,” says Prosper. “Basically, in many historical collections the Indigenous artist or persons represented consistently come up as ‘Unknown,’ but if a non-Indigenous person is connected to a piece—the photographer, collector, etc. —their name is known or stated.”

The intention behind the label goes deeper and opens a critique of colonial curatorial practices. As a form of Indigenous storytelling, these details are important as they offer insight into community connections, the artistic legacy of the regalia makers, and the important reciprocal relationships. It also allows for different ways to engage with the art maker and to understand who are the people being depicted in the photographs and who are their community connections. It also invites viewers to build a relationship with the L’nu Ancestor Once Known and opens up the possibility that their names may be recovered.

A wall of contemporary, full-colour portraits by Pardy features Mi’kmaw community members from the young to Elders and Matriarchs. Jacoby Battiste-Jadis of Eskasoni First Nation is wearing regalia made by his mother, Kate Jadis, and a feather cap made by Jennifer Denny with feathers gifted by his grandparents Marie Battiste and Sakej Henderson. Wyonna Bernard of Abegweit First Nation is wearing cuffs made by Mary-Jo Isaac, cap, skirt, cape, and leggings made by Ingrid Peters (gifted by Lisa Levi), and a pin by Mi’kmaw artist Melissa Peter-Paul, also from Abegweit First Nation. Michael R. Denny of Eskasoni First Nation is wearing a vest made by Melissa Peter-Paul, leggings made by Madonna Johnson, moccasins made by Nicole Travers, cuffs and aprons made by Mary Jo Isaac, a shirt made by Georgina Doucette, and a medallion created by Washonti:io Jacobs. Elders include Dr. Marie Battiste, who is wearing a jacket, skirt, and peaked cap made and beaded by Ingrid Brooks with alterations by Nina Kent; Karen Bernard, of We’koqmaq First Nation, a well-respected women’s peaked cap workshop facilitator, who is wearing a peaked cap she made herself; and Dr. Lorraine Whitman, of Glooscap First Nation, who is wearing a peaked cap passed down by Aunt Edith Peters, which was passed down to her by her grandmother (a Millbrook band member) and a beaded cape made by the wife of Noel Knockwood and is carrying baskets made by Frank Meuse.

In the didactic material for Amalkewinu’k’s, Dr. Roger Lewis, curator of Mi’kmaw Cultural Heritage at the Nova Scotia Museum, writes: “When looking at Mi’kmaw regalia, like other cultural belongings, keep in mind the ingenuity of the artists. In a changing and evolving world, they mastered the use of other materials in their art to a point where it remains distinctively Mi’kmaw. So, it therefore is more than a craft as it was often portrayed—especially with the Indian Affairs movement to market it as such. It evolves today, and that is seen in the work of contemporary artists. Things were and are made with thought and purpose.”

Lewis and Michelle Sylliboy, a multidisciplinary L’nu artist, are advisors to Prosper and Pardy, and they continue to work together on Amalkewinu’k, which is layered with stories and continues to evolve. As the storytelling aspect of the exhibition continues, the exhibition will likely be mounted in other gallery spaces in the future.

“The storytelling that came with how they presented their personal regalia was evident,” says Prosper. “Storytelling also came out in community member reactions to the historical images. The stories involved the regalia itself or things they were reminded of when talking about their regalia, and really everything in between.” 

Across from the contemporary colour portraits of Mi’kmaw community members, Amalkewinu’k also features a wall of black-and-white archival images from the Nova Scotia Museum. One of the photographs, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897),” features a group of prominent Mi’kmaw community members who attended the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Viewing the 1897 photograph in the former Victoria School of Art and Design feels like a full-circle experience, both marking, as they do, the same historic event.

One of the most striking images is a black-and-white portrait of Molly Musie from the mid-nineteenth century, taken in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, which is considered the earliest known portrait of a Mi’kmaw person depicted in a photographic process. While her birth and death dates are unknown, the didactic explains: “Molly Muise (the name was originally the French ‘Mius’ and is now spelled Meuse and Muse as well) is wearing a peaked cap with double-curve beadwork, a dark shirt, a short jacket with darker cuffs, over which she apparently has draped a second short jacket, its sleeves pulled inside, as a capelet. Her traditional dress with the large fold at the top is held up by suspenders with ornamental tabs. In her hands, she seems to be clutching a white handkerchief.”

From the first known black-and-white, archival image of a Mi’kmaw person to Pardy’s contemporary portraits of Mi’kmaw community members, Amalkewinu’k is a stunning exhibition connecting past, present and future generations of Mi’kmaw through regalia and culture.

While the wild green of a sunny May afternoon blazed outside, the bright white interior of a barn on a rural New Brunswick property radiated with its own kind of energy. These synergies are from a joint exhibition, Behind Moving Eyelids (May 10–11, 2025) in Rowley, New Brunswick, by Jeneca Klausen and Caitlin Lapeña, whose deceptively simple works hummed with ideas about feminine power, both surface and projected, and those of a deeper, darker, more private nature. 

I had to check Google Maps to locate the address for 13 Cedars, a new project space in rural Rowley, halfway between Saint John and St. Martins on Route 111. It was the second and final day of Behind Moving Eyelids, which featured wearable and sculptural works by Klausen, a Saint John jeweller with a dedicated following for her asymmetrical, nature-inspired, one-of-a-kind pieces. 

Her co-exhibitor, Lapeña, an artist working in printmaking and drawing, moved to the area a few years ago and co-founded 13 Cedars with her partner, Jay Isaac, a contemporary artist. She marvelled at how nearly everyone who came wore Klausen’s work, including me. On my left hand, I wear the bespoke silver wedding ring set on which she conspired with my husband. In my ears, I have a pair of wonky silver hearts I received as a birthday gift and have not removed in weeks.  

While local galleries have represented Klausen for decades, it was her first time exhibiting in a non-commercial setting. This gave the artist control over the installation and the opportunity to display her work on the wall in interesting shapes and configurations, including an installation of silver chains hung with pendants of handmade silver letters. 

Behind Moving Eyelids was also the first time Klausen showed alongside another artist. The pairing with Lapeña, who exhibited paintings, collages, drawings, and four fantastic silkscreens (she made them over the winter at Moncton’s Imago print studio), proved captivating. Their work resonated with intended connections from studio visits and an ongoing artistic dialogue, but also with serendipity, in symbols and motifs (cameos, cats, pearls) they arrived at independently. 

At a glance, there’s a risk of the show being taken merely as pretty or girly, which would be a huge miss. There’s a lot to unpack. 

The exhibition title Behind Moving Eyelids is from the late Saint John writer Gail Bonsall Kaye’s sole published poetry collection. Klausen had picked up a second-hand copy at an antiques shop and sent it to Isaac and Lapeña, who were at the time living in Toronto. Lapeña, like Klausen, was drawn to the old book as an object, with its beautifully illustrated cover. The poetic connections came later.

The artists’ shared interest in vintage objects informs their work. Lapeña repurposes images from antique women’s magazines, online archives, and found and personal items in her prints, paintings, and collages. For Behind Moving Eyelids, Klausen used sterling silver remnants from her studio, incorporating antique cameos, reclaimed coral, found beach stones, and vintage carved mother of pearl. 

This recycling speaks to the thrift of a time before fast fashion and disposable material culture, when nothing was wasted and the work of women consisted largely of making something from scraps: a quilt, a soup. There’s a strong sense of agency in the artists’ intentional reclamation of materials, images, and text. It reads as empowerment. 

Kaye’s 1973 poem “noon dream” is included in the exhibition notes. Some lines ring literally, such as the “heavy fronds of dark green ferns” in Klausen’s abstracted, organic forms and the Fundy landscape that is her first muse. Others are more of a vibe: the poem’s protagonist, dreaming in her green grotto, as in a fairy tale or myth, speaks of an ancientness Klausen’s work conveys. It is a temporal counterpoint to Lapeña’s more recent images from the capitalist age of advertising that commodifies beauty, fashion, and womanhood itself.

Jungian psychology is an influence in the deep blacks of Lapeña’s pristine prints. Oh, that midnight ink! You can disappear into it—and project onto it. The layering of the meticulous silkscreen process can be read as metaphorical, too, getting below the surface of things, abstracting, mystifying. Along with wearable art jewellery, Klausen presented several sculptural silver “spoonlets,” their cups the size of peas, perfect for a personal altar or as part of a private little rite.

Klausen says her Danish relatives often gift spoons for milestones such as birthdays or baptisms. And she explains that the expression “being born with a silver spoon in your mouth” originated during the bubonic plague, when the precious metal was believed to ward off the illness, projecting not only prosperity, but protection. With that, the work’s talismanic properties came into focus. Lapeña also depicts spoons in her work.

Some shows leave you gobsmacked at the gallery, then leave you. Others are a slower, sustained burn. Behind Moving Eyelids is the latter. The percolations began on the drive home, along the remote spruce-lined road. Weeks later, I’m still parsing its ideas about nature and industry, fashion and adornment, deep time and capitalism, beauty and power.  

You can find more content from the exhibition here.