On the theme of belonging, these thirteen Artspace members present perspectives centred in cultural and personal practice, familial bonds and breakages, connection and disconnection with land.
*The work of our member artists Kelly Egan and Nevan Hinks is presented in collaboration with ReFrame Film Festival in Gallery II. Their installation brings together photographic, filmic, performance, material and experimental practices.
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 17, 2026
Featuring:
Shabnam Afrand: a multi-disciplinary visual artist and educator, born and educated in Tehran. As a member of the Iranian Diaspora, identity and social discourse are important conceptual anchors in her practice. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree from Azad University in 2001. She then later taught in the faculty of Fine Arts at Azad University from 2003 to 2010. Since the beginning of her teaching career, she has been a member of the Iranian Painters Society. Shabnam moved to Canada in 2013. She participates and collaborates in various art events and residencies in Toronto. In 2017 and 2018, Shabnam received the Toronto Arts Foundation’s RBC Arts Access Fund. She received the Toronto Arts Foundation RBC Space Award and was the grant recipient of the Toronto Arts Council Newcomer Refugee Artist Mentorship Program in 2020. She is currently based in Peterborough and is a student in the Museum Management and Curatorship program at Fleming College.
Marta Chudolinska: a multidsciplinary artist born in Poland, who immigrated to Canada as a child and is now based in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, ON. I make zines, comics, prints and artist books using woodcut & linocut prints, papercuts and a variety of drawing materials.
My graphic novel, Back + Forth: A novel in 90 linocuts, was published by the Porcupine’s Quill Press in 2009. Since then, I have continued to produce comics that incorporate my interests in hand-crafted objects, expressive folk aesthetics, fantastical stories, and personal narratives.
My papercut comic, Babcia, a historical memoir which aims to rebuild my connection to my late grandmother, cut short by immigration and Alzheimer’s, was serialized in Broken Pencil Magazine from 2013 to 2024. Work on the project continues.
Since starting “Babcia,” I have experimented with the use of papercut art in comic storytelling, including my three-dimensional papercut and mixed media installation "Inheritance" at the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto and my accordion comic "After", published in the Humber Literary Review, which combines papercut with pencil crayon. Papercut continues to be a medium that allows me to explore new image constructions, have fun with the physicality of the process, and connect with the makings of my ancestors who practiced the Polish folk art of Wycinanki.
Kelly Egan*: an associate professor in Cultural Studies and Media Studies at Trent University whose work focuses on materiality and obsolescence, looking beyond hierarchical canonical and linear histories to probe new potentials for dead media.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts (2001) in Mass Communication from Carleton University, Master of Fine Arts (2006) in Film/Video from Bard College, a Certificate in Film Preservation from the Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum (2012), and an MA (2003) and PhD (2013) in Communication and Culture from the York/TMU Joint Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture.
Egan’s award-winning experimental films have exhibited extensively nationally and internationally at festivals/venues including the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Cinematheque Quebecois, Pacific Cinematheque, TIFF Lightbox, Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, George Eastman Museum, Anthology, Belvedere 21, Smart Museum of Art, Block Museum of Art, Northwest Film Centre, Antimatter Film Festival, PleasureDome, IMA Institut für Medienarchäologie, Foreman Art Gallery, Struts Gallery, Espace Virtuel, Factory Media Centre, Evans Contemporary, amongst others. She has lived and worked in Peterborough, Ontario since 2014.
Nevan Hinks*: a white settler, currently living and working in the treaty territory of the Michi Saagiig Anishanaabeg. She is a recent graduate from the University of Guelph with a BAH in Studio Art (2023), and is currently a Trent MA student in Cultural Studies. Her practice exists at the intersection of printmaking and performance art. Hinks explores precarity, ephemerality and the life of objects through her work. Hinks is heavily influenced by her underlying feelings of environmental grief and dread. Notable exhibitions include: Thoughts Thunk, November – January, Zavitz Gallery (2023); Start Quote, End Quote, Lalani Jennings Commercial Gallery (2023); and All the things that used to be ‘here,’ Garden Commercial Gallery (2024). She recently was an artist in residence at A Position on Retreat, in Lake Cowichan, British Columbia (2024).
Cydnee Hosker: a graduate of Fine Arts York University, now a retired visual arts teacher, has been working in arts education in the Peterborough area for thirty-eight years. Since her retirement, she has joined the Art School of Peterborough as an instructor. She has been a part of group and solo shows and has exhibited her work extensively in the Peterborough and GTA areas.
Cydnee considers herself a painter, an experimental photographer and a printmaker, with a leaning toward mixed media. She has a fascination with layers, textures, and the ethereal landscape of shape, line, pattern, and, above all, colour.
More recently, Cydnee has embraced the world of watercolour, exploring traditional and unconventional applications of the medium. She has come to the conclusion that watercolour has a mind of its own and, as a result, is endlessly fascinating.
Faye Jacobs: a weaver, sculptural textile artist, and teacher for more than fifty years. Faye was introduced to textile art by custom knitting throughout her Olympic skiing career, furthering her talents post-competition by manufacturing professional skiwear and boots. she studied and practiced Fiberarts in Boulder, Colorado, and Berkeley, California, returning to Canada in 1999. Faye was the lead hand in restoring the Jacquard Loom at Lang Pioneer Village Museum and received a 2017 Volunteer Service Award for Ontario 150. An active member of Surface Design Association. Faye has conducted workshops in paper making, natural dyes, specialized weaving techniques, felting, and eco-printing
Jane Lowbeer: a printmaker, painter and mixed-media artist, whose studio is near Keene in Peterborough County. Her artwork is a wayfaring for our perception of objects, landscape, climate and our tenuous place in this world. There is often a spirit of play and a kind of visual poetry in her work.
She started her artistic career as a printmaker, studying with Stanley Hayter at his famous Atelier 17 in Paris. During her career she has exhibited in New York, Montreal, and various places in Europe. Her works have garnered her prizes and are included in private and public collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Biblioteque National in Paris.
She was a member of artist-run Loop Gallery in Toronto for many years. Since coming to Peterborough she had solo shows at Visual Arts Clarington (VAC), the Arts & Heritage Centre (AH Centre) in Warkworth, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.
Ramune Luminaire: Ramune Luminaire was born in Montreal and moved to England at the age of ten, where she lived and trained as an artist before returning to Canada twenty-four years ago. Now she works in her studio in the woods north of Peterborough, Ontario. Her subject matter usually revolves around finding a place for emotions and experiences which are often hidden or supressed. She attended both Central St Martins School of Art and Design and Camberwell College of Art in London, England and has an honours degree in visual arts specialising in sculpture and ceramics. Her current chosen media are drawing, sculpture, installation and writing. She has shown her art in galleries and museums in Southern Ontario, Toronto, Montreal, various parts of England and Norway.
Jeff Macklin: Jeffrey is a Peterborough, Ontario-based artist, working primarily with relief printing (letterpress) and mixed media. He often employs words as visual triggers, as well as present-day/historical pop-culture icons and figures in both his print work and his mixed media pieces. Themes stem from nature, pop culture, cycling, and most importantly, the queer community in his hometown of Peterborough, Ontario, and the beautiful people in it. I use the term Collective Effervescence to describe my various communities, and all of them as a greater whole.
Laura Madera: received her BFA from Emily Carr University, BC and an MFA from the University of Guelph, ON. Her practice explores the potential of watercolour, as a means to poetically and materially investigate natural phenomena within a contemporary context. Her works are made not from a position of mastery but rather in dialogue between her and the material, informed by a holistic approach - where making in the studio is a kind of material thinking. Her work is embedded in themes of interbeing, plant ecology, and iconography.
Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Far x Wide in New York NY, Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG) in Oshawa ON, Monastiraki in Montreal QC and is held in private collections across Canada, the United States and Mexico. She was named as one of Canada’s most promising emerging painters by the Magenta Foundation. Recently, she was a recipient of an Artist Production grant from the Ontario Arts Council. Her studio is located in Peterborough on the treaty and traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg.
Patrick Moore: a visual artist who works in painting, printmaking and sculpture. His two-dimensional work provides a platform to engage in a spiritual and artistic dialogue about landscape. By engaging in an art making process that can amplify their unique histories, he explores how spaces can be transformed into more meaningful places resonating with beauty and deep reflective power.
Gillian Turnham: graduated from NSCAD University as a fine metalsmith, creating miniature sculptural works in metal, wood, and stone. Her early work investigated elements of structure and embellishment through architectural miniature. Building on her interest in architectural ornamentation, her attention soon turned towards the complex tessellating patterns of the Islamic tradition.
As a practicing Muslim, Gillian embraced Islamic Art as a way to connect her spiritual evolution to her creative path. Gillian’s recent works reposition classical geometry and manuscript illumination techniques within a contemporary Fine Art context. Her work dissolves the illusion of a Traditional / Contemporary dichotomy within the Arts, speaking both to the current moment, and continuing the legacy of devoted Islamic artisans from centuries past. She has studied Islamic Geometric Pattern Analysis with global leaders in the field, and become recognized as a specialist in her own right.
Alongside exhibitions and commissions, Gillian is a regular teacher for the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts (London, UK) and has developed outreach initiatives to enhance awareness and understanding of traditional arts in the community.
Jane Wild: Originally from England, I grew up in rural southern Ontario. In 1981, I graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in textiles and entered a two-year residency at Harbourfront Craft Studio in Toronto where I began to teach weaving.
After moving to Lindsay, Ontario, I continued to teach at Fleming College Continuing Education and stayed involved in the arts community as board member, artist, teacher, theatre and set designer. In 1987, I was part of the founding of the Victoria County Studio Tour. During that time I continued to exhibit including at the Museum for Textiles in Toronto, St. Mary’s University, Halifax NS and Savaria Museum in Hungary.
In the 1990’s, while raising a family, I entered the museum and art gallery world including teaching at Fleming College’s Conservation program, and working in exhibitions and programs at the Peterborough Museum and Archives and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.
In the spring of 2020, the screeching halt to all that activity precipitated by the pandemic, granted me the time and space to resume art works stopped in mid-stitch 20 years previously. But I am not the same artist now as I was then and the perspective that two decades of life has gifted me now informs my contemporary practice. Though textiles still lead my vision, I also include painting and mixed media.