Fall 2025 Exhibitions Launch at Esker Foundation

Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy is a landmark retrospective celebrating the groundbreaking Canadian artist with over 50 works spanning sculpture, performance, and photography from the past 46 years.

Jana Sterbak, Manifesto, 2018. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by: Denis Labelle.

Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy

September 20 – December 21, 2025

Opening Reception
Friday, September 19, 6 – 9pm

In Conversation with Jana Sterbak
Saturday, January 20, 1 – 2pm

Tour with Curator/Writer Katherine Ylitalo & Director/Curator Naomi Potter
Friday, October 10, 6 – 7pm

Curating the Work of Jana Sterbak: Diana Nemiroff & Johanne Sloan In Conversation
Thursday, November 13, 6 – 8pm

One of Canada’s most influential artists, Jana Sterbak has had a significant impact on contemporary art, artists, and audiences for almost 50 years. This large-scale retrospective presents a comprehensive overview of Sterbak’s work, celebrating her pivotal contributions to art history and offering a rare opportunity to experience her work firsthand.

Dimensions of Intimacy features innovative early work that pushes material and sculptural norms, wearable structures that merge object with performance, significant video and film work, as well as rarely exhibited artist editions, photographs, and drawings from Sterbak’s own collection.

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now known as Czechia), Sterbak left with her parents after the Soviet invasion, moving west and settling in Canada. Though she has maintained a home and studio in Montréal for many years, Sterbak remains connected to Europe, where most of her extensive exhibitions and professional life have taken place, and from where she draws her sense of skepticism, irony, and dark humour.

The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of Sterbak’s ongoing material exploration. Featuring important early works like I Want You to Feel the Way I do…(The Dress), 1984–1985, and the iconic Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, 1987, the exhibition will also present several rarely seen artist editions, photographs, and drawings from Sterbak’s own collection. Dimensions of Intimacy will highlight Sterbak’s pivotal contributions, examining not only her sculptural works, but also how performance and photography have been central to her practice. The last major retrospective of Jana Sterbak’s work in Canada was the 1991 exhibition States of Being at the National Gallery of Canada, with smaller exhibitions of her work presented in Montréal, Québec City, Rouyn-Noranda, as well as representing Canada at the Canadian Pavilion in Venice in 2003, however few exhibitions of significance have been presented in Canada—and notably, none of these have been presented in Western Canada.

The important exhibition Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy will celebrate this eminent and influential Canadian artist’s career in this rare and unique opportunity in Canada.

Biography

Czech-born Canadian artist Jana Sterbak lives and works in Montréal and Paris. Among Canada’s most renowned and influential living artists, Sterbak’s work ruthlessly considers the body and the human condition. Her 40-year career has spanned sculpture, video, installation, and performance.

Her work has been featured in major exhibitions across Canada and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Carré d’Art, Nîmes; the Palais des Papes, Avignon; Serpentine Gallery, London; Museu Tàpies, Barcelona; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; and Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg. Her work is included in many collections, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the San Diego Art Museum; MAAXI Museum, Rome; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; and FotoMuseum, Winterthur.

She has won multiple prizes and accolades, including the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas, the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Prix Ozias-Leduc from La Fondation Émile Nelligan, and the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

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Anna Semenoff, First Things First, 2025. Esker Project Space. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.

Anna Semenoff: First Things First

In the Project Space
Until October 19, 2025

First Things First, Semenoff’s sculptural installation, is a spatial, material, and conceptual study of the arch; an architectural form that connects or delineates space, and whose geometry allows it to bear excessive weight and span large distances.

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Kristine Zingeler, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

Kristine Zingeler: In the Balance

Upcoming In The Project Space
October 27, 2025 – February 22, 2026

Kristine Zingeler’s artistic practice emerges from a process of slow and attentive looking, curiosity, and wonder. She is drawn to the beauty and resonance of nature’s detritus: rocks, seashells, feathers, tree bark, seed pods. Her studio is filled with an ever-expanding collection of objects and fragments, often gathered from her garden, or nearby walks with her family. She approaches these objects with the empathy and curiosity of a maker, parsing the complexities of their colour, form, and texture in a bid to understand their creation.

In the Balance, Zingeler’s new site-specific installation, offers a series of ceramic vessels inspired by the overlooked beauty and labyrinthine complexity of wasp nests.

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Explore and participate in Esker’s free public programming, discover the upcoming programs at: www.eskerfoundation.com/program/

About Esker Foundation

Founded in May 2012, Esker Foundation owes its vision to its founders, Calgary-based collectors and philanthropists, Jim and Susan Hill, who wanted to create an accessible and welcoming space for people to experience contemporary art exhibitions and programming. An important part of this vision is to ensure that barriers to access are as low as possible. To that end, Esker is proud to offer free admission and free programs.

Through exhibitions, public programs, publishing, and commissioning activities, the Foundation supports artists and audiences through a variety of learning, connecting, and collaborative models. The gallery reflects on current developments in local, regional, and international culture; creates opportunities for public dialogue; and supports the production of ground-breaking new work, ideas, and research.

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Friday: 11am – 6pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 – 5pm

Accessibility:
The gallery is barrier-free.
Admission and Programs are free.

Press Contact:
Jill Henderson, Head of Communications & Marketing
Tel: 403 930 2499
jhenderson@eskerfoundation.com

Press Kit: Jana Sterbak at Esker Foundation.

Esker Foundation
4th Floor, 1011 9th Ave SE
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
@EskerFoundation
www.eskerfoundation.com