2026 Graduate Thesis Exhibitions

Over the next several weeks, our IAMD and CCP Graduate Students will be showcasing their work at their Graduate Thesis Exhibitions. These exhibitions will take place all over the OCAD U campus (plus some off-campus) and will feature a wide range of subjects and mediums. These exhibitions are the result of two years of hard work and dedication, so check out as many as you can! 

February 25 – March 1: 

Graduate Gallery

Eroded Narrative: The Strata of Costal Memory, Chloe Gim

My practice employs pictorial abstraction to translate the Third Culture Kid and diasporic experience into layered seascapes and lithic forms. Through the strategic use of line, repetition, and translucency, the work registers the nuances of memory, displacement, and return. In this exhibition, these fragments function as a visual archive held in tension between clarity and opacity inviting viewers to encounter belonging as something partial, shifting, and felt, rather than a resolved state.

Ignite Gallery

In Between, ZhiZhe

It is a space presenting an experience, a memory, and a dream.

It is like when I dreamed myself in a cycle of splitting and fusing.

It is a place where I hide and reflect in between the reality.

Saçımı Süpürge Ettim (Made My Hair Into a Broom), Damla Yarar

Through durational performance and installation, this exhibition recontextualizes domestic labour as an artistic practice, examining care and intergenerational inheritance. It is dedicated to my grandmothers, my mother, and to all the women whose love has been expressed through labour. This work is for you, because of you, and thanks to you.

Opening reception and performance on February 26th at 6:00 pm.

Ada Slaight Hallway

We Are All We Need. Sofia Sue-Wah-Sing

We Are All We Need is an immersive and interactive installation meant to foster belonging, connection, safety and healing for people of colour and marginalized peoples in order to offer ways to move through the wounds caused by colonialism in our lives. The space will be filled with handmade objects, herbs, fruit, and plants placed with the intention of sharing healing knowledge and messages heavily inspired by Caribbean traditions. As a Guyanese-Italian artist, Sue-Wah-Sing has designed the space to be filled with signifiers of Caribbean spiritual culture and the deep connections to land and spirit that all people of colour possess.

Opening Reception – February 27, 2:00 - 4:00 pm

March 4 - 8:

Graduate Gallery

In translation...the language of my mother, curated by Amira Radwan

This exhibition brings together contemporary artists from Middle Eastern diasporas whose practices reflect on intergenerational inheritance, relationships to land, diasporic identity, and domesticity. Through video, mixed-media installation and photography, the artists trace how cultural knowledge and memory are carried and transformed across generations and geographies. Attending closely to the ways language manifests in diaspora, the works negotiate questions of belonging, inheritance and diasporic identity. Artworks by: Alize Zorlutuna, Amina Boufennara, Christina Hajjar.

Room 118, 205 Richmond St. W. 

Who Defines Us? Jiayi Wei

Who Defines Us uses traditional Chinese shadow puppetry as an interactive installation to examine how identity and gender roles are shaped by culture, family, and social expectations in contemporary China. By inviting audiences to control the puppets themselves, the work transforms identity from something assigned into something that can be questioned, reshaped, and rewritten.

Ignite Gallery

Before Language Settles, Yuxuan Lin (Sherry)

Before Language Settles treats sound as a compositional system that reorganizes multilingual text through interactive and typographic structures. By examining moments of illegibility, translation failure, and sonic mediation, the project invites viewers to experience language as an embodied and resonant process through speaking, reading, and listening.

The exhibition includes interactive digital works and touchable printed materials. Some components respond to sound input in real time, and visitors are invited to engage through listening, movement, and proximity.

The Hypervisible Woman and her Shadow, curated by Cassidy Alejandria

The Hypervisible Woman and her Shadow bridges artworks by Inéz Petrazzini, Jasmine Liaw, and Mina Keykhaei, to consider how contemporary arts-based methods for refuting hierarchies of knowledge can contribute to discourses of U.S. Third World feminism. The artworks included draw from or connect to embodied experience, using culturally specific references from the artists’ diasporic experiences in order to convey meaning. As a result, the exhibition provides vantage points to examine potential uses of embodied experience in arts institutions.

Reception: March 6th, 2026, 6:30 - 8:00 pm
Programming: March 8th, 2026, 1:00 - 3:00 pm
 

Ada Slaight 

Malikat Al-Khalaa (Queen of the Void), Shahinaz S

Series of paintings meant to spark open-ended conversation on healing and identity in the context of possession ceremony in Northern Sudan. Situating multidisciplinary art and design as a restorative method of self-identification and restoration.

 

Translucent Yet Present, Huiling Yan

This exhibition explores childhood memories through watercolor on rice paper, evoking a sense of transparency and fragility. As cities grow and landscapes change, many of these once-familiar scenes have physically disappeared. Yet, they remain vividly present in the mind—intangible, but never truly lost.

March 11 - 15:

Graduate Gallery

SACRED LANDSCAPES | VISUAL THEOLOGY, Nora Alkeyat

This exhibition translates Islamic teachings on virtues and vices into contemporary mixed-media paintings and illustrations. Rooted in theological Medieval and Islamic illuminated manuscript traditions, the work engages with nature & sacred knowledge and invites reflection through ornament, symbolism, and visual storytelling.

More details coming soon—follow @nora.alkeyat on Instagram for full updates.

Experimental Media Space

Echoes of Water: They Called Her A Witch, Juliana Nelson Gagné

Echoes of Water: They Called Her A Witch explores water, feminism, portals and family history through autoethnographic research led by psychic automatism and resulting in an immersive installation. The work explores, how water acts as an inter-dimensional Portal to the Spirit World.

The installation of cyanotype mobiles emphasizes the circle symbology that occurs throughout the exhibit. The circle represents Portals, the water cycle, epigenetics, the self and movements of time. More circle appear in the videos in the form of the sun, moon and light orbs. The videos represent the layering and multiplicity of stories and interviews collected during familial and cognitive research. Shadows seen shifting throughout the videos are suggestive of Spirits. The corresponding audio relays edited stories of familial hauntings, witches and water.

In the EMS there will be videos playing with flashing lights and sound playing. The artwork displayed in the hallway and stairs does not have flashing lights but there will be quiet ambient noise. Sensory bags will be available for the duration of the show.

Opening Reception: March 11, from 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Artist Talk with a Q and A: March 13, from 5:30 - 7:00 pm
Closing Reception: March 14, from 7:00 - 9:00 pm

Room 118, 205 Richmond St. W. 

Interconnectedness:Recipes for nourishing the soul. PAPA, CHOCLO Y PALLAR, Hugo Bernilla

The exhibition invites the viewers to reflect on the interconnected relationships between living things (seeds), artifacts/objects and human beings to engage our communities and reinforce our identity. Inspired by pre-Columbian civilizations and using material made of staple food from Peru, the aim of the project is to resignify, provide additional use, function and purpose of the seeds to honour and value these staple foods as a cultural heritage and ancestral knowledge.

 Room 418, 205 Richmond St. W. 

Where Do The Fish Go? Wenxi Lyu

The exhibition explores the spontaneous flow of everyday life through the embodied figure of the fish and material experiments that blur body, installation, and space.

The ArQuives, 34 Isabella St. 

queer creative processes or, the void, curated by Ren Critton-Papp

artwork by Evan Sagman, Kiera Harrigan, Riley Midroni, Juliana Gagné, g blekkenhorst

Ignite Gallery

Vessels of Light: Introspective Architectures, Tavleen Lall

This exhibition explores glass, light, and sound as metaphoric vessels for spiritual self-introspection, presented through intuitive, abstraction-based interdisciplinary practices.

Opening Reception: March 12, Thursday, 2:00 pm. Followed by, A sound-immersive collaborative experience with sound therapy practitioner Lisa Boon of Mississauga Sound Therapy, 3:00 pm onwards.

Weaving the Unseen, Sophia Kyungwon Kim

Weaving the Unseen examines care as a material and relational condition, sustained through physical labour, repetition, and quiet negotiation. Moving across painting, textile installation, and bronze sculpture, the exhibition traces how small, often overlooked gestures accumulate into structures that hold relational life together. Through a series of material processes, flexible and ephemeral actions are translated into forms of tension, endurance, and persistence. Rather than locating care within a specific role or place, the works reveal it as a quietly operative force—forms that build and sustain one another, spreading quietly through proximity and contact.

Opening Reception - March 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Ada Slaight

The Stories of Shanghai: Mythic Ecologies as Relational Metaphors, Alicia Tian

"The Stories of Shanhai" presents a series of paintings that draw on Daoist-inspired ecological thinking and mythopoetic storytelling to explore posthuman relationships between humans, nonhuman life, and the environment. Rather than responding through crisis or spectacle, the works offer quiet, relational narratives in which mythic ecologies function as metaphors for coexistence, transformation, and co-flourishing within an interconnected world.

Between Two Soils: Reflections on Diaspora and Belonging, Emmette Lewis

Between Two Soils investigates the friction of diasporic identity, migration, and memory. Through painting, installation, and archival documentation, the exhibition captures the weight of immigration and critiques how state-imposed identity reshapes belonging and personhood. Each work navigates the intersections of personal and collective histories, the evolution of familial ties across generations, and the enduring impact of cultural rupture and political division.

March 18 - 22:

Graduate Gallery

To Gather, curated by Leah Morgan Small

This exhibition thesis titled "To Gather" is a curated group exhibition taking place March 18th-22nd 2026 at OCAD University's Graduate Gallery. The show invites viewers to engage critically with material presence and acts of gathering. Through collecting organic or found material, artists are immersed in human-nature relationships that brings together the ways in which visual culture engages in connection with the local.
 

Reception Friday March 20th, 7:00 - 9:00 pm in the Graduate Gallery

Room 418, 205 Richmond St. W. 

Under the Familiar, Zhuyu Li

Taking "over-familiarity" as a starting point, my works use silk and wood to respond to the suppressed subtleties and hidden unrest in homogenized spaces, exploring the unsteadiness beneath the familiar and awakening imagination under the normalized surface.

Ignite Gallery

S’enfarger dans l’quotidien, Jules Dufresne

This exhibition explores the relationship that neurodivergent people have with digital media, through an autoethnographic lens. It’s a deep dive into a year of trying to deal with internet and cellphone addiction, and all the things I tried to get out of the chaos of algorithmic life. Through getting in touch with older tech -a slide projector, typewriters, film photography- and with nature, I look for ways to slow down, resist and move through the world differently.

Opening reception is March 19th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Artist Talk is March 20th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

In the Space Between: A Felting Journey of Tactile Healing, Yifan Zhang

In the Space Between: A Felting Journey of Tactile Healing explores the paradoxical relationship between pain and healing through the tactile processes of needle felting and wet felting. Inspired by the artist’s lived experience of skin-picking, the installation visualizes how repetitive labor, pressure, and material transformation can generate moments of relief and psychological repair. By presenting felted forms with unfolding layers, peeled-open structures, and unfinished surfaces, the work frames healing as an ongoing process rather than a completed resolution.

Ada Slaight Gallery

Graduate Thesis Exhibition, Gregory Brown

Graduate Thesis Exhibition, Hayeon Lee

This thesis exhibition practices 경청 (listening) and allows unintentional actions. Using clay and playful systems, the works resist clear resolution and ask visitors to stay with slowness, instability, and quiet change.

The Assemblage, 2015 Dundas Street West

Invisible Ink, Ishgun Kaur Lamba

Invisible Ink is a response to the internal silence of living in a body under attack by its own immune system. The work translates non-verbal, embodied experience into a visual language that resists clarity and permanence. The project invites viewers to witness the hidden made legible.

March 25 - 29:

Graduate Gallery

All the Light Reveals, Vivienne Valladares

All the Light Reveals is an exhibition of immersive installations inviting viewers to reflect and revel in the light. Much of what we understand about the Universe emerges from collecting and interpreting information carried by light — a process that has shaped both scientific knowledge and our sense of place within the cosmos. The exhibition reflects on how these acts of interpretation reveal an interconnected universe, positioning the human subject within the expansive, intricate web of the Cosmos.

Experimental Media Space

How can you tell me this story? Eugene Mireku

*Trick* This work explores written and oral traditions and dialogues in picture making and sculpture. *Trick*

Room 118, 205 Richmond St. W. 

Graduate Thesis Exhibition, Saba Syed

Ignite Gallery

Solo Exhibition, Inéz Petrazzini

In this exhibition, the artist pays homage to her little sister-ancestor Kai (2005-2018). Informed by her Jamaican and Argentine cultural heritage, the artist draws on ancestral spiritual practices to create a space for life to be celebrated and grief to be shared and transformed across generations. This collection of paintings, sculptures, and engravings combines a range of mediums including herbs, leaves, shells, and reshaped textiles from Kai’s clothing.

Racial Melancholia, Maria Khan

This body of paintings explores racial melancholia as an ongoing emotional condition shaped by migration and incomplete belonging. Through quiet, everyday scenes set within Canadian public spaces, the work reflects the subtle weight immigrants carry in their bodies, gestures, and expressions long after arrival.

Ada Slaight Gallery

Graduate Thesis Exhibition, Yuting Zhou

In this performance-based weaving installation, I use a reverse loom and a squid-like yokai costume inspired by the bigfin squid to translate shifting bipolar emotions into cloth. Over repeated live weaving sessions, changes in density, colour, and structural materialize my fluctuating moods, turning the loom into both an emotional archive and a shared space for reflecting on mental health.

Dear Ms. Mararet, Sade Alexis

This exhibition is a dedication to my late grandmother through photo archive, drawing, and ancestral worship. Created to honour her legacy, and document my relationship with her as my ancestor.

Opening celebration March 26 6:00 - 9:00 pm including artist talk at 7:00 pm.

April 1 - 5:

Note: OCAD U is closed on April 3rd

Graduate Gallery

B-SIDE, Jona Parra

Experimental Media Space

My baby little calfy, how could you ever understand, Kai/ Yetong Qi

This mixed-media installation brings together textiles, bamboo strips, and copper wire, centring on a hollow bamboo-woven calf with suspended silk pieces and semi-translucent, patterned fabrics.
The work incorporates patchwork, embroidery, collage, bamboo weaving, and dye-sublimation transfer.
It explores family dynamics, idealized intergenerational responsibility, and the tensions that emerge as personal identity shifts across generational roles.

The installation may be gently touched. However, elements should not be pulled, detached, or moved from their original positions.

Room 118, 205 Richmond St. W. 

The Memoir of the Fourth Finger, (Jessie)Jihyun Lee

This interdisciplinary show examines identity across time and space through an autobiographical approach and art as a healing method, integrating painting, installation, performance, glass blowing, ceramic making, and documentary film. Her practice explores how one might progress and blend identity across the dichotomies of self/others, us/them, confrontation/peace, and absence/presence, and create ‘third space’, ‘the trans-cultural space’, through the exploration of personal story, unique family lineage, and sociopolitical & ecological context.

April 1st (Wed) 7:00 pm Opening performance “Peace Act 2026: How to hold space.”

Documentary Screening ( Artist Talk & Q&A)
April 4th(Sat) from 4:00 to 6:00 pm
205 Richmond st Room 115

Documentary Screening ( Artist Talk & Q&A)
April 2nd (Thurs) from 7:00 – 9:00 pm
100 McCual st. Room 353

Ignite Gallery

Graduate Thesis Exhibition, Madeline Wilmink

Illusion of Time, Liv Qiu

My work meditates on time as an interconnected, dimensional field, inspired by theoretical physics and the idea that past, present, and future coexist. Through glass and virtual reality, I move between material presence and immaterial infinity, capturing moments while dissolving linear time.

Ada Slaight Gallery

The Ever Good, Nadia McLaren

Quantum physics scientists question the possibility that we, along with our universe, could be falling through a Black Hole, sparking connections and parallels with Anishnaabe cosmology, which Nadia McLaren explores as a framework for her exhibition. She wonders if we are falling together, like Sky Woman who fell from the Sky World with medicines in hand, what is carried, cherished and protected in life and throughout generations is "The Ever Good," McLaren's Granny lovingly expressed through her life.

Opening reception on April 2nd.

Instagram @nadialeemclaren

 

Ice Station Zebra, Wiley Saunders

A series of semi autobiographical paintings and sculptures exploring the “box” format. Paintings made with custom built stretchers and frames in unorthodox shapes. Boxes are made from materials like wood, metal, plastic, concrete and felt, they will be filled with things like toys and interestingly shaped off cuts exploring themes of nostalgia, childhood, memory, and surveillance.