The exhibition Wingspan features artworks made throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by long-term care residents at Perley Health in Ottawa, Ontario. Through a variety of art mediums – painting, sculpture, and ceramics – residents, assisted by the Perley Health Creative Arts staff, have been exploring their recent life experiences through the lens of birds and bird behavior.

Breaking away from both traditional representations of portraiture and the current mainstream cultural shift of the “self,” this exhibition brings together three artists who examine and redefine the portrait, transforming narratives and challenging social norms of gender and identity.

Yinka Shonibare’s Mr. and Mrs. Andrews Without Their Heads reimagines Thomas Gainsborough’s famous 18th-century portrait of Mr. Andrews, Mrs. Andrews, and their land, in a critique of our reliance on ideas of authenticity.

Dark Ice demonstrates the intersections between the unique artistic, studio, and land-based practices of Leslie Reid of Ottawa, ON, and Robert Kautuk of Kangiqtugaapik (Clyde River), NU.

Wany’s multimedia installation brings together immersive video footage of the unpredictable waves of the Atlantic Ocean, with sculptural approximations of the compartments in which human beings were stored below decks on slaving ships.

Jobena Petonoquot brings together community, art history, colonization, religion and resilience, by carrying family histories and holistic and relational knowledge from her Anishinābe and Naskapi relations into her experiences and rigorous artistic practice.

Using a multidisciplinary approach for this exhibition, Kwan engages with the City of Ottawa’s Firestone Collection of Canadian Art (FCCA).