2025 Stonecroft Lecture: Suzy Lake

Photo: Suzy Lake. Courtesy of Robert Yoshioka

The 11th Annual Stonecroft Visiting Artist Lecture
Suzy Lake: Distilled Resistance

Thursday, October 30, 2025, 6:00pm ET
Auditorium at the National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa
Event in-person and livestream online

The Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), is honored to present Suzy Lake as the speaker for the eleventh Annual Stonecroft Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture. The event will take place on Thursday, October 30, 2025, at 6:00pm in the auditorium of the National Gallery of Canada. The University of Ottawa is located on the unceded territories of the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation, who are the traditional custodians of this land.

This lecture series is made possible through the generous support of the Stonecroft Foundation for the Arts, dedicated to advancing contemporary art discourse. The Annual Stonecroft Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture Series offers students at the University of Ottawa and the general public a unique opportunity to engage with the practices of prominent Canadian artists.

The 10th anniversary of the Stonecroft Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture Series is celebrated in Volume 15 (June 2025) of the National Gallery of Canada Review. This publication contains a selection of seven lectures that have occurred over the past ten years.

We warmly invite you to attend the 11th edition of the Stonecroft Lecture, featuring an enlightening talk by Suzy Lake, either in person at the NGC auditorium or stream online.

Suzy Lake, My Friend Told Me I Carried Too Many Stones #9, 1995, chromogenic photo-collage, 76.2 x 61 x 1.9 cm (30 x 24 x 0.75 inches)

About Suzy Lake

Suzy Lake immigrated to Montreal from Detroit, Michigan, in 1968. She is known for her large-scale photography examining the body as both subject and device. Although classically trained, she adopted performance, video and photography as tools to explore the politics of the body, identity and power relations. Lake’s later work probes deeper into these issues of resistance to include the politics and poetics of the aging body. Her work is represented by Michèle Didier in Paris and Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, where her current solo exhibition runs until November 1.

Lake was one of 13 co-founders of Véhicule Art Inc., an artist-run centre, in 1972. In addition, her teaching career spanned 40 years, beginning with the Montreal Museum School. She retired from teaching as a professor emerita at the University of Guelph in 2008. The Art Gallery of Ontario presented Introducing Suzy Lake, a full career retrospective, in 2014. In 2016, Lake received both the Scotiabank Photography Award and a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Last year, she was presented the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Chicago.

Her work is in the collections of major museums in Canada, as well as significant international institutions such as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York; Museum Brandhorst in Munich, Germany; the Centre national des arts plastiques in Paris, France; the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, Michigan; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York; the Museum of the City of Łódź in Łódź, Poland; and the Verbund Collection in Vienna, Austria.

Please join us on Thursday, October 30, at 6:00pm at the NGC Auditorium. If you prefer to attend virtually, register for the live stream of the lecture. The lecture will be delivered in English, with simultaneous French interpretation available.

For more information:
Talia M Boileau
Department of Visual Arts
University of Ottawa
613-562-5868
arvsec@uottawa.ca

Suzy Lake, Pluck #2, 2001, chromogenic print, 82.6 x 101.6 cm (32.5 x 40 inches)

About the University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation. The Department offers attentive teaching and mentoring within a close-knit university community, while also encouraging student interaction with a broad network of art institutions and professionals. For more information, visit Department of Visual Arts.

University of Ottawa MFA Visual Arts:
In this bilingual two-year program students take an in-depth look at theories informing contemporary art and image culture. Theory courses provide exposure to contemporary artistic and cultural discourse, and the basis for students’ contextualization of their personal studio work within current art practice and theoretical investigation. The Professional Internship course, in which students can work at one of the many art institutions in the region, or with a professional artist, is a distinctive feature of our program. The deadline for application to the program is February 1, 2026. Information about the application process is available here. Interested candidates are invited to contact Professor Martin Golland, Graduate Program Director for more information: mav-mfa@uottawa.ca.

About the National Gallery of Canada

Founded in 1880, the National Gallery of Canada is among the world’s most respected art institutions. As a national museum, we exist to serve all Canadians, no matter where they live. We do this by sharing our collection, exhibitions, and public programming widely. We create dynamic experiences that allow for new ways of seeing ourselves and each other through the visual arts, while centering Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Our mandate is to develop, preserve and present a collection for the learning and enjoyment of all- now and for generations to come. We are home to more than 90,000 works, including one of the finest collections of Indigenous and Canadian art, major works from the 14th to the 21st century and extensive library and archival holdings. To find out more about the Gallery’s programming and activities visit gallery.ca, and follow us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Ankosé – Everything is Connected – Tout est relié
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Accessibility: The Auditorium at the National Gallery of Canada is fully accessible.