Mona Filip

Venice Day 2 was Giardini - some pavilion highlights. (Did not queued for Austria and France.) 1-4 Nordic Pavilion - Klara Kristalova, Benjamin Orlow 5 Canada - @abbasakhavan curated by @mskimnguyen 6-7 Spain - Oriol Vilanova 8-12 Germany - Henrike Nauman, Sung Tieu 13 Australia - Khaled Sabsabi 14-17 Brazil - curated by Diane Lima 18 Romania - Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan 19-20 British Pavilion - Lubaina Himid

We would like to congratulate Marigold Santos and Rajni Perera on their presentation of Efflorescence / The Way We Wake at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – In Minor Keys, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. Contemporary Calgary is proud to be a touring partner for this significant body of work, having hosted Rajni Perera & Marigold Santos: Efflorescence / The Way We Wake—curated by Cheryl Sim and produced and circulated by PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art—in our Ring Gallery from November 21, 2024, to April 6, 2025. It is incredibly exciting to celebrate these artists and their work on the international stage. Our CEO David Leinster, Chief Curator Mona Filip, and Senior Curator Kanika Anand were thrilled to be in Venice to celebrate in person during opening week. 💫 Congratulations Rajni & Marigold 💫 𝙀𝙛𝙛𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 / 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙖𝙮 𝙒𝙚 𝙒𝙖𝙠𝙚 
2023–26 
60” x 96” x 48” Polymer clay, foam, plaster coat, Japanese paper, paint, ink, metallic powder, synthetic hair, wood, plastic, aluminum. #BiennaleArte2026 #InMinorKeys #RajniPerera #MarigoldSantos

Opening June 4 ➡️ Ghazaleh Avarzamani: Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return Examining familiar objects and settings—playgrounds, board games, sport arenas—Ghazaleh Avarzamani traces the subtle architectures through which power is learned, rehearsed and maintained. What appears playful or ordinary reveals itself as something more insistent: a hostile choreography of rules, conquests and defeats insidiously shaping social and political life. Her installations unfold as spaces that are both seductive and destabilizing. Beneath the surface of games, manuals, fables and educational references lie the economic, psychological and ideological structures that govern how people belong to society. Churn, Earn, Burn and then Return extends this inquiry through a seemingly whimsical environment comprising sculptures, textiles, images, text, found and archival objects. Yet in this new installation, inspired by the Monopoly game, the stakes gradually emerge as more sombre. Cycles of labour, accumulation, exhaustion and repetition move through the space like rules of a game already in motion before the viewer arrives. Throughout the exhibition, game tokens operate as allegories of hierarchy, assigning value, status and movement. The familiar riding horse is replaced with a sardonic reference to the life-size butter sculpture of the the Prince of Wales and his horse famously presented by Canada at the British Empire Exhibition in 1925 as a celebration of imperial power, directly linking the logic of Monopoly to the spectacle of territorial expansion, extraction and the gamification of ownership. Butter recurs throughout the exhibition as both material and metaphor, tied equally to the labour of churning and the volatility of churning markets, where instability, excess and collapse remain in constant circulation. At a moment marked by large-scale political and economic shifts that often leave individuals feeling powerless, Avarzamani’s practice insists on the inherent possibilities of recognition. By making visible the systems that quietly organize daily life, her work opens a space for critical attention, disruption and refusal. Curated by Mona Filip.

Still Venice Day 1: another highlight. The Promise of Change, stunning paintings of @michael_armitage_studio at @palazzo_grassi , full of darkness and light, anger and tenderness. “The painter does not shy away from violent and harsh themes, believing that art cannot ignore reality but must instead grapple with it: the consequences of war, corruption and instability in equatorial regions, the migration crisis, the weight of societal judgment, and abuses of power form the backdrop of some of his poignant works.”

Contemporary Calgary is proud to serve as an Institutional Partner for the Canada Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. In his site-specific installation, Entre chien et loup, Abbas Akhavan reimagines the pavilion’s architecture as a Wardian case—a precursor to the terrarium used to transport plants throughout the British Empire. The installation features a custom pool of giant Victoria water lilies, germinated in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK) and the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua (IT). The title Entre chien et loup—literally “between dog and wolf”—evokes the indeterminate nature of twilight, when distinctions blur and a wolf might be mistaken for a dog. In this liminal space, the exhibition invites us to reconsider our relationship to the natural and built worlds. CEO David Leinster, Chief Curator Mona Filip, and Senior Curator Kanika Anand were thrilled to be in Venice to celebrate the opening of this project, following our presentation of Akhavan’s work at Contemporary Calgary in the group exhibition, Presence (June 26—November 9, 2025), curated by Kanika Anand. Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup is on view in Venice through November 22, 2026. @NatGalleryCan // @mbacanada  
#CanadaPavilion #AbbasAkhavan #BiennaleArte2026 [1-5] Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup, 2026, Canada Pavilion, 61st InternationalArt Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia.Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts.© Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti.

Back from Venice with eyes full and mind buzzing. Saw a lot of wonderful art, missed a lot, inevitably. Posting in retrospect. Day 1 started with @lornasimpson and @paulonazareth_official at @palazzo_grassi Punta della Dogana. Most definitely a highlight. 💙

While there’s art in Venice, there’s art in Calgary! ❤️Get @reshare_app • @merdetasdelen A few installation views from my current solo exhibition Wounded in Three Acts at @contemporarycalgary Huge thank you to curator @monafilip and the incredible team (especially @murielkahwagi and Brandon Hearty!) for their support Wounded in Three Acts is on view until August 16th All photos by Blaine Campbell

What Language Are They Speaking? is a six-channel sound installation composed with recordings of modes of transportation—by land, by sea, or by air—from a local to a global scale. Made in collabortaion with my brother Mani @manimazinani , audiences are encouraged to listen to the installation from multiple auditory-angles (between speakers or focused on one particular speaker). Each speaker has its own environment of sound: airplanes taking off, water lapping against a canoe, or conversation in Toronto's subway. Interspersed throughout the individual channels, Mani tells the story of a contraband cassette tape that crossed a border with him, myself, and our mother in 1987. What Language Are They Speaking? points to the constellation of languages and cultures that rotate throughout Toronto. With this timely observation, comes the acknowledgement of the diversity of languages that exist, and the work that one has to undertake in order to better understand our neighbours, who each hold their own complex and meaningful culture brought from all parts of the globe. What Language Are They Speaking was originally commissioned by Mona Filip in 2016.

📣 Final month on view Our 2026 Winter Exhibitions are on view through Sunday, May 3. Across two exhibitions, this season reflects on the role of the museum and the ways its practices shape cultural memory and meaning. Free admission. 🖼️ 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗾: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗢𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 Cape Breton born, Toronto based artist Sameer Farooq (@studiosameerfarooq ) presents a solo exhibition that offers a deeply poetic space to reflect on the fraught and violent histories of art and anthropological museums, their colonial origins, structures, and impulses. Farooq probes notions of provenance, repatriation, and repair, composing a series of new and recent sculptures and images to articulate unique ideas for repurposing the emptied spaces of museums devoid of their spoils. Mining the possibilities offered by sustained engagement, Farooq invites us to envision what the museum might become through the mechanics of restitution, what it may shift to collect and document, and what kind of experiences it could nurture. Curated by Mona Filip (@monafilip ). Organized and circulated by Dalhousie Art Gallery (@dalhousie_art_gallery ). 🖼️ 𝗦𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝘁 In the 1950s, Frederick Varley wandered the halls of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) with pencil in hand. 𝗦𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝘁 invites visitors to share in his careful observations, and to think about why we visit museums: to see, record, and reflect. Varley visited the ROM several times, sketching in the Natural History and Art and Culture galleries, where the Chinese collection was his favourite subject. His curiosity extended beyond objects to his fellow visitors, particularly in the dinosaur galleries, where smartly dressed groups could be seen admiring the specimens. Varley’s keen eye for detail is evident in his documentation of fossils and sculptures. Through these sketches and historical photographs, we can also glimpse how objects were arranged and displayed, offering insight into the museum’s approach to storytelling and interpretation at the time. Curated by Anik Glaude. To learn more, visit VarleyArtGallery.ca

Olivia Whetung: inawendiwok is closing soon! In this exhibition, Olivia Whetung’s poignant works solicit our attention and reconsideration of spaces and species that are crucial to biodiversity and to sustainable food production. Tenderly foregrounding our more-than-human neighbours, they remind us that we are not the only ones to benefit from the land’s gifts, nor to suffer from ecological ruin. The exhibition’s Anishinaabemowin title, inawendiwok, loosely translates as “they are related to each other,” emphasizing the ways in which coexistence within the ecosystem is mutually linked. With human yearning for endlessly available resources and sanitized nature comes devastating loss. Only through a renewed understanding of kinship and gratitude may we restore an ecology based on responsibility and reciprocity that can sustain the future. A must-see in person featuring sculptural installations, digital prints, and three-dimensional beadworks, don't miss Olivia Whetung: inawendiwok on view until April 12, 2026. Organized by The Art Gallery of Mississauga, curated by Mona Filip. Images: Installation of Olivia Whetung: inawendiwok at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2025, photos by Toni Hafkenscheid. #theRMG #OliviaWhetung #DowntownOshawa

Dress rehearsal and staff tours today for two exhibitions + performance opening tomorrow night @contemporarycalgary ! @richardibghy & @mariloulemmens Stacking Crates to Reach a Banana, curated by @kanika__anand , @merdetasdelen Wounded in Three Acts + A Long Dramatic Pause (in collaboration with @cindy.ansah ), curated by me. 🥰 Two exhibitions + performance that ask us to rethink our interpersonal and interspecies interactions, our purposes and methods, our alliances and participations.

Excited to be in Gatineau with @coco.monnet getting a sneak peek of Pizandawatc at @canmushistory 💜 If you’re in Ottawa, join us on Thursday evening for the opening!