2026 Exhibitions and 70th Anniversary at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

KWAG is thrilled to announce its compelling line-up of artists for 2026. The Gallery presents four major exhibitions from February until November: Sharing the Passion: 70 Years of Building the Collection, a historical survey examining the KWAG Permanent Collection’s evolution; Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass, featuring four artists from Canada, Norway, and Austria in a multi-sensorial peat bog installation, followed by Boring Earth, which explores more-than-human worldings and challenges conventional perspectives on time, presence, myth, and tradition; and Rosalie Favell: Belonging (1982-2024), the first retrospective of the iconic Red River Métis artist’s photography work exploring themes of identity, empowerment, desire, and community. KWAG’s year is just getting started—an absolutely monumental exhibition will be announced for December 2026.

Maria Simmons, Ingrid Bjørnaali, Fabian Lanzmaier, Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass (still image), 2023. 3-channel, 3D animated video, 22:16 min. Image courtesy of the artists.

Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass

February 21 – June 28, 2026
Maria Simmons, Fabian Lanzmaier, Ingrid Bjørnaali, Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel
Curated by Darryn Doull

Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass is a cross-Atlantic, audio-visual collaboration that explores the embodiment and translation of peatland knowledge through blending physical engagement with digital interpretations. As part of their collaboration, the artists have visited peat bogs in Finland, Estonia, Norway and Canada. Through recordings of those landscapes they find and interpret naturally created monuments like dead, standing trees held in place by the mires, and portals that connect past and present, the bubbles on the surface, and the subterranean world.

Sculptures, sound, scent and photogrammetry-based methods of digital gathering, depict sites that form new virtual spaces, seeking a re-mystification and a non-quantifiable approach to peatlands. The exhibition juxtaposes a generative sound installation, moving image and sculpture into various combinations, offering alternative perspectives of the translated sites. Throughout the installation, scent unlocks other memories and relations, nudging the installation further into a site of transformation and translocation.

This exhibition is supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway and by the Austrian Embassy Ottawa.

Related Programs:

Opening Celebration and Artist Talk
Saturday, February 21, 2:00 – 4:00pm
(Artist Talk at 2:30pm)

Edward Burtynsky, Nickel Tailings #39, Sudbury, Ontario (1996). Chromogenic print on Kodak Professional paper, 101.7 x 152.4 cm. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Permanent Collection: Gift of the Artist, 2000. Photo: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto.

Sharing the Passion: 70 Years of Building the Collection

March 14 – July 19, 2026

Since 1956, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery has grown from a small volunteer organization in a bicycle shed beside KW Collegiate to Waterloo Region’s largest public art gallery and a major force in Canadian art. Walk through the decades of KWAG history in this anniversary exhibition, as we shine a light on the significant stories and relationships that have made the Gallery what it is today, as told through the Permanent Collection and the people who made it all possible.

Related Programs:

Opening Celebration
Friday, March 13
Member’s Preview, 6:00 – 7:00pm
Open to the public, 7:00 – 10:00pm
Free | Live music

Sharing the Passion: Panel Discussion
Saturday, March 28, 2:00 – 4:00pm
Free

Through the Registrar’s Eyes
A special tour with Jennifer Bullock, KWAG Registrar + Assistant Curator
Thursday, April 23, 7:00pm | RSVP here
Sunday, May 31, 2:00pm | RSVP here
Free, RSVP required (note: both tours are the same)

Boring Earth

July 18 – November 22, 2026
Curated by Darryn Doull

KWAG is pleased to welcome Boring Earth for a major new installation. Boring Earth is an Earth-based collective concerned with discrepant, more-than-human worldings and the portals that jamb between. Their research considers eclipsed and emergent modalities of socionatural relations, muddling extractive dualities through pluriversal inquiry, elemental knowing, and play. A collaboration between artists Patrick Cruz and Laila Fox, and a slippery roster of rocky, watery, animal, vegetal, ethereal, and bacterial bodies, Boring Earth challenges the One-World myth, conjuring plural ways of perceiving/believing/relating across urbanized and invisible ecosystems.

Related Programs:

Opening Celebration
Saturday, July 18, 2:00 – 4:00pm

Rosalie Favell, My first day of assimulation, 1996 (remastered 2024), from the series from an early age. Image courtesy of the artist.

Rosalie Favell | Belonging (1982-2024)

August 8 – November 22, 2026
Curated by Ryan Rice
Organized and circulated by Onsite Gallery, OCAD University

Belonging is the first retrospective of renowned Red River Métis artist Rosalie Favell, showcasing a powerful curated selection of her lens-based works from 1982 to 2024. This exhibition celebrates Favell’s groundbreaking photographic practice—from seminal series like Living Evidence and Plain(s) Warrior Artist to her expansive archive Facing the Camera—which invites us to bear witness and explore the complex themes of identity, empowerment, same-sex desire, community and the nuanced search for belonging through a lens that is both deeply personal and subtly subversive.

Related Programs:

Opening Celebration
Friday, August 7, 7:00 – 10:00pm

Belonging (1982-2024) is possible due to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (an agency of the Government of Ontario), Terra Foundation for American Art, Toronto Arts Council, and The Delaney Family.

Land Acknowledgment

The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery respectfully acknowledges that we are located in Block 2 on the Haldimand Tract: land promised to Six Nations, which includes ten kilometers on each side of the Grand River. This is the traditional home of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee Peoples, whose resilience we honor by offering this Gallery as a space to reflect and learn from one another. We are committed to reconciliation and ensuring that our Gallery’s programs and Permanent Collection demonstrate more diverse, culturally relevant Canadian art and artists.

About Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

As Waterloo Region’s leading public art gallery, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG) connects people and ideas through art. Its nationally acclaimed exhibitions and programs welcome all to be inspired and challenged through a deepened understanding of ourselves, our cultures, and our communities. It offers dynamic public programs that inspire creativity and an appreciation of the visual arts in the Region and beyond. Admission is free.

Accessibility: KWAG is fully accessible.

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
101 Queen Street North
Kitchener, ON N2H 6P7
www.kwag.ca

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Artist Talks sponsored by Sorbara Law.