‘Ascension of Abundance’ is an exhibition in which artists move through time and space to portray thoughts, feelings and ideas related to dreaming of worlds beyond our current reality.  

Janine Ilya, Par Nair, Alexis Nanibush-Pamajewong, Cedar-Eve and Hau Pham all share speculative futures and themes of abundance, joy, sovereignty, magic-making, and world-building, each imbedded the artist’s practices. Creating space and energy to expand our current reality while sharing their stories, memories, and thoughts regarding the past, present and future.

Image Descriptions: 

Six South Asian women and girls in brightly coloured fabric are embroidered onto kasavu mundu, a textile with a golden border, traditionally worn by Indian men from Kerala, India.

Curator Bio:

Natalie King is a queer interdisciplinary Anishinaabe (Algonquin) artist, facilitator and member of Timiskaming First Nation. King’s arts practice ranges from video, painting, sculpture and installation as well as community engagement, curation and arts administration.  

Often involving portrayals of queer femmes, King’s works are about embracing the ambiguity and multiplicities of identity within the Anishinaabe queer femme experience(s). King’s practice operates from a firmly critical, anti-colonial, non-oppressive, and future-bound perspective, reclaiming the realities of lived lives through frameworks of desire and survivance.

King’s recent exhibitions include Come and Get Your Love at Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto (2022), Proud Joy at Nuit Blanche Toronto (2022), Bursting with Love at Harbourfront Centre (2021) PAGEANT curated by Ryan Rice at Centre[3] in Hamilton (2021), and (Re)membering and (Re)imagining: the Joyous Star Peoples of Turtle Island at Hearth (2021). King has extensive mural making practice that includes a permanent mural currently on at the Art Gallery of Burlington. King holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University (2018). King is currently GalleryTPW’s 2023 Curatorial Research Fellow.

Documentation by Em Moor