Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art presents the world premiere of NDN Giver, from September 17, 2025 – January 25, 2026. Curated by the gallery’s Assistant Curator, member of the Tsiits Git’anee clan, and passionate Haida Nation scholar Amelia Rea in her solo curatorial debut, the exhibition examines reciprocity, identity, and the evolving practice of gift-giving within potlatch traditions. Bringing together contemporary potlatch gifts such as prints and mugs alongside archival records of historical potlatches, NDN Giver features select pieces from Amelia’s personal collection as well as works by artists from communities across the coast, including the Haida and Heiltsuk Nations. For admission information and complete event details, visit: billreidgallery.ca

For more than ten years now, the paintings of Sojourner Truth Parsons have trafficked in the saturated and sensorial. Plumbing the space between abstraction and legibility, feeling and form, the language of Parsons’ work is an intuitive one. Building depth through accretion, collapsing interior and exterior realms, and traversing a shifting set of references — from the history of dance to the Gee’s Bend quilts of Alabama to her garden in the Catskill Mountains — her paintings give shape to intensities both atmospheric and embodied.

Louise brings together a selection of works produced by the Vancouver-born, New York-based artist over the past several years, surveying the dexterity of her movement between figuration and form and her canvases’ elemental approach to sensation, texture and tone. Titled after the work of poet Louise Glück — known for her decades-long meditation on the illusions and agonies of the self — the exhibition traces the enduring emotional registers, both individual and collective, that occupy Parsons’ time in the studio: desire, loss, isolation, redemption, resurgence.

Nan Goldin: Stendhal Syndrome explores the intimate and emotional force of Goldin’s photography through the moving-image format. Goldin is renowned for her slideshows, which were originally composed of 35mm slides on carousels set to music but are now presented as single-channel videos. Her moving-image works invite viewers to experience Goldin’s images not just as visual narratives, but as visceral encounters.

Drawing on the metaphor of the Stendhal Syndrome—a psychosomatic condition of dizziness, confusion or even hallucinations triggered by exposure to intense beauty—Stendhal Syndrome (2024) juxtaposes Goldin’s photographs taken over the last twenty years of Classical, Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces with portraits of her friends, chosen family and lovers.

Nan Goldin: Stendhal Syndrome features a new acquisition to the Gallery’s permanent collection and represents the first major presentation of Goldin’s work in Vancouver.

We who have known tides begins from a poetic inquiry that seeks to understand what it means to exist at the edges of the Pacific Ocean. We who have known tides is an examination that unveils the ways in which the ocean and living in proximity to it has shaped the work of Indigenous artists, as well as their relation to territories across land and water, and their connections to communities that have witnessed the tides change for thousands of years. Drawn predominantly from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection, this exhibition asks us to consider where we are on a deeper level, looking to the ocean as a way of understanding how this place is ever changing.

The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC presents the world premiere of Entangled Territories: Tibet Through Images, on display from November 20, 2025 to March 29, 2026. Curated by Dr. Fuyubi Nakamura, in collaboration with Tibetan-Canadian community members and artists, the bilingual exhibition explores Tibet’s rich cultural heritage alongside its current political context, through the lenses and voices of the Tibetan diasporic community. The exhibition features photography, letters, objects, and belongings from MOA’s archives alongside contemporary contributions from Tibetan-Canadian artists: Lodoe Laura will have several works on display, alongside the screenings of two short films from filmmaker Kunsang Kyirong, whose work was recently screened at the Toronto and Vancouver International Film Festivals. MOA will celebrate the opening of Entangled Territories on November 20, 6–9pm, with free museum admission for all. To learn more about the exhibition, as well as ancillary events, visit moa.ubc.ca

Through the lens of contemporary artists’ engagement with the metaphorical and literal processes of fire and the spaces it creates and displaces, The Structure of Smoke includes works that problematize the poetic, structural and political aspects of fire. These works complicate the inherent contradictions of wildness and domestication, technological progress and social control, colonial conditions, rebirth and death. Holding a smoked mirror to contemporary society, the works in this exhibition offer ways to undo the familiar in how we approach our uncertain future.

Speculative in nature, The Structure of Smoke is associative, contextual and driven by artistic practices that disturb existing power relations and question their own conditions and structures. With a focus on ecologies, interconnectedness and relationality the works and curatorial premise consider relating to land, community, family and wildfire ecologies including the non-human. As we have seen with the migration of smoke across the globe and the birth of a regular fire season, the ways in which we live with fire require new strategies that embrace specific Indigenous and ecological knowledges and the ability to develop relations with fire beyond the spectacle and devastation of its impacts.

The Structure of Smoke is curated by Melanie O’Brian and Tania Willard and made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members.

Western Front is pleased to present Image Syncers, a solo exhibition by Canadian-British artist Nina Davies. The exhibition responds to current TikTok trends in which people mimic artificially generated videos, with Davies reimagining this choreographic phenomenon as a tool to disrupt visual economies and open up alternative modes of meaning-making.

At the centre of the exhibition is a 12-minute video framed as an episode of the fictional podcast What’s Sizzlin’. In it, host Bryce Snyder interviews journalist Teagan Carroll about her exposé on a break-in at the Trutch Seed Bank. Carroll reveals that the group responsible, known as the Plot Corps, physically reproduced AI-generated imagery to evade detection. Their discussion expands into broader reflections on “perception-collapse,” “image syncing,” and the evolving relationships between language, images, and bodies, in a world shaped by synthetic media.

Accompanying the video are sculptural works that expand the narrative world. A series of holographic forms appear as spectral stand-ins for the fictional Image Syncers, while transparent, vitrine-like backpacks display their personal belongings. These include smartphones showing images and footage of performances that evoke AI-generated scenes, yet were created entirely through analogue means—costumes, props, makeup, and lighting—as well as the “cursed hands” used by the characters to interface with generated worlds or manipulate real-world events.

That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature is the largest solo exhibition of iconic British Columbia artist Emily Carr (1871–1945) at the Vancouver Art Gallery in over twenty years.

Featuring more than 100 works, it explores in-depth the artist’s obsession with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, using close analysis of her paintings and writings to investigate how she understood nature and her relationship to it. The exhibition argues that Carr’s landscapes exist at the intersection between an experience of nature and an idea about how to transmit that experience through a painting, with the goal of expressing a divine essence in nature. It teases out the tension between individual and local references and the larger ideas and philosophies about nature in Western cultural traditions.

Outsiders and Others presents New Drawings by Harold Coego, a focused exhibition of recent works on paper.

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1973, Coego began his professional life working as an archaeology assistant with the Office of the Historian of Havana, contributing to urban excavations of Spanish colonial architecture and archaeological research in caves associated with Cuba’s Indigenous populations. This early engagement with material history and excavation continues to inform his artistic approach.

​Coego later became involved with Teatro El Obstáculo, the experimental theatre collective directed by Víctor Varela, where he worked across set design, lighting, acting, and production. Alongside this work, he developed his painting practice and wrote film scripts, several of which he co-directed while serving as a guest writer at the International School of Film and Television in Cuba.

​​Since relocating to Vancouver, Canada, in 2002, Coego has continued to develop a multidisciplinary practice encompassing painting, drawing, and collage. Harold’s work has been exhibited internationally.

​The works in this exhibition comprise a new series of pencil drawings on paper that has been soaked in olive oil prior to drawing. This process alters the paper’s physical properties, turning it translucent, similar to vellum. Lines blur, graphite smudges, and the surface resists precision, creating a tension as the drawings are done with great precision.

​​These drawings touch on contemporary concerns including technological acceleration, political systems, survival, and the persistence of the human spirit.

Guest curated by Salish artist Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, the exhibition will showcase 12 Coast and Interior Salish artists working across sculpture, printmaking, textiles, painting, and mixed media. This unique exhibition will illuminate the deep cultural, linguistic, and artistic connections shared across the Salish world.

To date, most institutions have focused on Coastal Salish art; however, with this exhibition, the Bill Reid Gallery highlights the interconnectivity between Interior and Coast Salish art. Historically, Salish art has been marginalized and overlooked in comparison to other Northwest Coast styles.

This exhibition directly addresses that inequity by celebrating the aesthetic, cultural, and conceptual richness of Salish art, positioning it as both vital and visionary. The curatorial vision is built around the river as a physical and symbolic connector, exploring identity, land, water, and evolving cultural practices.

The exhibition will feature established artists who have paved the way, such as Susan Point and Angela George, along with emerging artists showcasing the future of Salish art.

This solo exhibition spotlights the work of Jamie Gentry, a Kwakwaka’wakw artist based on Vancouver Island, whose practice is rooted in patience, precision, and deep personal meaning. On view is a striking series of moccasins, each entirely handmade and adorned with intricate, lifelike floral beadwork that reflects both technical mastery and reverence for the natural world.

For more than twelve years, Jamie has created moccasins by hand, often collaborating with clients through highly customized beadwork. In this exhibition, however, she turns inward, creating solely for herself rather than for sale. These works mark a powerful shift in her practice: a journey of self-discovery, growth, and the deliberate act of making art as a gift of joy to oneself.

The exhibition also features large-format photographs that place the moccasins within the landscapes that inspired them, offering a poetic dialogue between object and environment. Together, the works invite viewers to consider care, intention, and the beauty that emerges when creativity is guided by personal freedom.

Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art presents Blossoming, a solo exhibition from Kwakwaka’wakw artist Jamie Gentry, curated by Aliya Boubard, from February 28 – May 24, 2026. After 12 years of creating moccasins by commission, this exhibition serves as an opportunity for Gentry to implement her handcrafted beadwork based solely on personal inspiration, culminating in a journey of self-discovery and growth, and a gift to create her own joy. The exhibition features a series of handmade moccasins adorned with realistic floral beadwork along with a selection of photographs showcasing the moccasins in the natural environment from which each pair was inspired. A workshop with the artist will be held during the exhibition run, further details to be announced. For admission information and complete event details, visit: billreidgallery.ca

Michèle Stephenson’s moving documentary centres on the 1969 student protests against racism at Montreal’s Concordia University (then known as Sir George Williams University) and their contribution to the story of Black liberation.

The film is an electrifying history of Black Canada, a story of displacement and discrimination, prejudice and Black pride, from Freedom Road to Africville and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, fused from a mind-bogglingly rich cache of archival material, first person accounts and a remarkable score by celebrated jazz pianist Andy Milne.

True North illuminates a tempestuous moment in Canada’s reckoning with its own racism—and reminds us of the lasting power of collective action.