Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON

Agnes Reimagined is taking shape and its completion is within reach! Footloose and fancy free, off-site and on the road, Agnes is busy building something else, too. Open to developing programs organically, through serendipitous encounters or by following curious leads, Agnes’s upcoming season makes some of this behind-the-scenes work visible through a series of experimental exhibitions, programs and events produced in collaboration with some of Kingston’s finest, including Yellow House, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston Canadian Film Festival, Queen’s Archives and Trellis HIV & Community Care.

Fluorescent Beige
Janice Reid

September 12 – November 9, 2025
Reception: September 27, 2:00 – 4:00pm
207 Stuart Street, Kingston
Curated by Tianna Edwards and Emelie Chhangur

Fluorescent Beige features works by rising Brampton-based photographer Janice Reid. The exhibition emerges from a decades-long relationship between the artist and Kingston community leader Tianna Edwards, the exhibition’s co-curator. Highlighting Reid’s multi-dimensional practices of studio portraiture and experimental storytelling, Fluorescent Beige illuminates Black and queer experiences, mirroring Edwards’ work at Kingston’s Yellow House with QTBIPoC students.

Fluorescent Beige is accompanied by several events including a conversation between Edwards and Reid at the opening reception (September 27) and a photography workshop hosted by the artist.

The Clearing
Marney McDiarmid and Clelia Scala

September 19 – October 12, 2025
Reception: September 19, 6:00 – 8:00pm
207 Stuart Street, Kingston
Curated by Sunny Kerr

McDiarmid and Scala reimagine a shipping container to transport viewers from an object of global commodity to an organic ecosystem that values introspection and connection.

Inspiration for the project derives from the sit spot, a mindfulness practice of sitting in nature and observing the world around you. Using clay, paper and mixed materials, McDiarmid and Scala have created work based on their engagement with nature. Viewers are invited to participate in an act of regeneration by bringing personal documents to the exhibit, shredding them and adding them to the artists’ landscape.

The installation features a poem by Sadiqa de Meijer, a soundscape by Matt Rogalsky and a mural by Lee Stewart.

Patterns for All Bodies
Historical Costume Ball Drag Show Fashion Pageant Spectacular (again)

October 3, 2025, 6:30 – 9:00pm
Grant Hall, 43 University Avenue, Kingston

Agnes drags the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first!

Agnes launches Patterns for All Bodies 2 (PfAB2): The Fall Victorian Line 1880 >> 2025. To mark this event, Agnes hosts Historical Costume Ball Drag Show Fashion Pageant Spectacular (again)!

This shindig features Victorian garb from the Dress Collection at Agnes, re-imagined by local drag artists Dare de LaFemme, Tyffanie Morgan and Rowena Whey, and performed for the first time on the runway. DJ Tiger Stylez will provide the music with costume design by Jessica Dykins.

Wear your fanciest dress and join the celebration!

A Smile Split by the Stars
An Experiment by Katherine McKittrick

November 15 – December 20, 2025
Reception: November 22, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, 370 King Street West, Kingston

A Smile Split by the Stars is a collaborative narration of nourbeSe philip’s poem, Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones. The installation reads philip’s poem through, and as, different audio-visual-textual moments of revolutionary intent, wherein Black girlhood and Black femininity are rewriting the aesthetic ideals of the modern era.

Interactive events round out this exhibition: a guided reading session, facilitated by Katherine McKittrick and Nasrin Himada, a curatorial talk and a writing workshop facilitated by author Juliane Okot Bitek.

Exhibition co-produced with Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University and The Revolutionary Demand for Happiness.

Hotline
Posters from the Trellis HIV & Community Care Collection

November 21, 2025 – January 18, 2026
207 Stuart Street, Kingston
Curated by Heather Home and Alicia Boutilier, with Diane Kearnan

Since Silence=Death was first pasted on the walls of New York in 1987, posters have been powerful artistic tools for HIV/AIDS advocacy. Hotline features over forty posters produced by public services, community groups and pharmaceutical companies, from the very local to the international, from the late 1980s to 2010s.

Hotline draws from Trellis’s collection of over 500 posters, donated to Queen’s University Archives as part of the larger Kingston and area 2SLGBTQ+ archives, initiated in 2011 in recognition of a need to document and support the region’s queer histories and communities.

Midheaven
Stacey Sproule, Ambivalently Yours, Victoria Cheong, Erika DeFreitas and Sara Keller.

January 30 – March 29, 2026
Reception: January 30, 2026, 6:00 – 8:00pm
207 Stuart Street, Kingston
Curated by Emelie Chhangur

Centering on the astrological point of the Midheaven and its dialogue with our public lives, this exhibition features artworks that explore the sky, weather, air, and atmosphere as reflections of artistic labour. Through photographic processes and animation, the artists reveal magic in the quotidian, the invisible and the ubiquitous.

Agnes partners with the Kingston Canadian Film Festival to offer an animation workshop for teens facilitated by Stacey Sproule.

AGNES Etherington Art Centre
AGNES.queensu.ca

Facebook: @aeartcentre
Instagram: @aeartcentre
LinkedIn: @agnes-etherington-art-centre

Media inquiries: Liz Cooper, Communications and Marketing Coordinator at elizabeth.cooper@queensu.ca

Situated within territories of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat, AGNES is a curatorially-driven and research-intensive professional art centre proudly serving a dual mandate as an internationally recognized public art gallery and pedagogical resource at Queen’s. By commissioning, researching, collecting and stewarding works of art, and by exhibiting and interpreting visual culture through an intersectional lens, AGNES creates opportunities for participation and exchange across communities, cultures, histories and geographies.

AGNES is committed to anti-racism. We work to eradicate institutional biases and develop accountable programs that centre artistic expressions and lived experiences of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour. AGNES promotes 2SLGBTQIAP+ positive spaces.

Image credits:
1. Janice Reid, Untitled (Emanuella), digital photograph, 2024. Courtesy of artist.
2. Marney McDiarmid and Clelia Scala, The Clearing (detail), 2025. Courtesy of artists.
3. Tyffanie Morgan, Dare de LaFemme and Rowena Whey at the Historical Costume Ball Drag Show Fashion Pageant Spectacular, 2024. Photo: Amy Walton.
4. Agnes wordmark with heart.