This exhibition highlights a vital current in contemporary artmaking today: the intersection between visual art and dance. Named for the process whereby a body comes into awareness of itself in space, Kinesthesia brings together an eclectic gathering of artists and groups whose respective practices acknowledge and celebrate the human body’s many ways of being in movement.

Kinesthesia includes visual artists, choreographers, dance collectives, and other performers from across the worlds of dance and art in Canada. Throughout their respective practices, visitors will experience extraordinary artworks that foreground the unique wisdom of bodily experience. The exhibition includes a vibrant variety of media, including sculpture, painting, textile, photography, film, and virtual reality. Combined, the array of work on display reflects ongoing conversations in the fields of dance and live artmaking, speaking to critical topics such as embodiment, choreography, healing, ritual, performance, and transcendence. Drawn from across the country, selected artists include All Bodies Dance, ĀNANDAM dance theatre, Justine A. Chambers, Fran Chudnoff, Brendan Fernandes, Ronald Li, Tanya Linklater, Lucy M. May, Dana Michel, Maisie O’Brien, Evann Siebens, and Sarah Nash Wong.

In all of their work, these artists, dancers, and performers present powerful models for the ways that a human body can present itself in space, whether as the grieving embodiment of inherited trauma, or the wisdom of healing; as an expression of the ways a body can query the paradigms of public space, and unpack their unspoken logics; as sites for both the enactment and subversion of choreographed movement; or as the presentation of alternative modes of identity. Dance relentlessly proposes and then enacts its own possibilities, in movement.

Along with objects and installations, Kinesthesia features a series of live performance works. These include an excerpt from Montreal-based choreographer Lucy M. May’s The Conditions; a dance battle with Funk’N’Sole Street Dance Society; an interpretation of Toronto-based ĀNANDAM dance theatre’s Ephemeral Artifacts sculptural installation; a staging of Vancouver and Surrey-based Justine A. Chambers’ and Simran Sachar’s Today is the evening to strike lightning / Aaj To Bijiliyan Girane Ki Shaam Hai; and a rendition of Montreal-based live artist Dana Michel’s durational work MIKE. For more details about these performances, visit our Events section.

Within The Mould, Against the Grain establishes itself as a case study on the genealogies and emergence of Black culture from within the Continent ( Africa) and across the diaspora.

Utilizing Deforrest Brown Jr’s seminal text (Assembling A Black Counter-Culture) and Stuart Halls’s assertions on Black popular culture and identity as conceptual points of departure, this exhibition investigates the similarities, differences and connections that exist between instances of Black cultural production that have emerged from the Western Black diaspora as well as the Continent. Though united under the shared identity marker of “Black”, each one holds nuance based on separate histories, traditions, material conditions and varying stakes.

Through an intimate coalescing of lens-based works, schematics and sonic installations works, exhibiting artists Tati Au Miel, Odartey Aryee, Deforrest Brown jr, and Isabel Okoro expand on existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks that consider Black artists as knowledge keepers and producers, insisting that Black cultural identity, like Black cultural production, is a robust and complex process of both becoming and being that is ongoing.

Exploring themes like traditional spirituality, embodied knowledge, the limits of representation, global Black identity, and the tensions between appropriation, commercialization, and Black cultural production, this exhibition exemplifies the politics of style and oppositionality that position Black cultural production as existing against the grain, despite the hegemonic forces that attempt to dilute and subvert its potential.

The exhibition brings together artists Mike McNeeley, Chuck Melnychuk, and Sandrine Umuhoza in collaboration with WePress Community Arts Space. Their works reflect on lived experiences and social conditions of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and South—narratives that also hold relevance with communities in Surrey.

Aligned with WePress’ commitment to working with those most impacted by systemic injustice, Practices of Care grew from community workshops centering immunocompromised and disabled participants. These workshops focused on expressions of collective care, with McNeeley, Melnychuk, and Umuhoza contributing as peer workers. In these roles, they offered guidance, shared knowledge, and helped cultivate a supportive space grounded in accessibility.

Developed alongside the exhibition, descriptive and extend labels will provide visual details of the artworks, creating an inclusive experience that supports deeper engagement and understanding. Altogether, Practices of Care reflects a collaborative and creative process, highlighting how art can serve as a tool for community connection and transformative dialogue.