Fall 2026 Exhibitions Launch at Esker Foundation
Presenting three main space solo exhibitions by Brendan Fernandes, Arthur Jafa, and Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca; with Johnathan Onyschuk in the Project Space.
September 19 – December 20, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, September 18, 6–9pm
Brendan Fernandes, Noise See III, 2026. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York.
Brendan Fernandes
Other Moves
Brendan Fernandes is an internationally recognized Canadian artist who works at the intersection of dance and visual art, his practice explores race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. For Fernandes, dance is political, celebratory, and collaborative, offering a language to proclaim visibility, assert identity, and to seek connection or joy. As a queer, young newcomer to Toronto, dance gave Fernandes community, belonging, and a means of creative expression. After an injury ended his dance career prematurely, Fernandes turned to visual art, building a multidisciplinary practice that raises questions around migration, systemic injustice, colonial legacies, and the complexities of identity, often guided by his personal and familial history. Sitting at the intersection between dance and visual arts, Fernandes’ work is often, in his own words, “part ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest.”
Performance: Noise See
Friday, November 20, 6–8pm
Noise See is a performance work by Canadian visual artist and choreographer Brendan Fernandes. Originally commissioned by The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, the work explores themes of visibility, protest, the legacy of empire, and embodied resistance. Central to the performance are vibrant quilted tapestry costumes that evoke textiles commonly associated with contemporary Maasai culture in Kenya yet rooted in British colonial influence. Presented alongside the exhibition Other Moves, Noise See is performed as a duet: two dancers engage in a choreographic dialogue—merging and separating, concealing and revealing—through their bodily interaction with one another and their own biomorphic form as they inhabit their costume.
Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, the Message is Death, HD-video, Still, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Julia Stoschek Collection.
Arthur Jafa
Love is the Message, the Message is Death
Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016)—one of Arthur Jafa’s most well-known, celebrated, and globally resonant works—assembles a vast visual record of Black life in the United States. Drawn from historical footage, news broadcasts, viral videos, popular movies, sports coverage, music videos, and footage shot by the artist himself, Jafa sequences a rapid succession of moving images into a work that is, in turns, devastating and life-affirming. Set to Kanye West’s gospel-infused anthem Ultralight Beam, the nearly eight-minute montage traces the enduring realities of anti-Black violence alongside extraordinary and everyday articulations of joy, movement, creativity, spirituality, and resistance.
Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Swinguerra, 2019. Video still. Copyright: The Artists. Courtesy the artists and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Sao Paulo/Rio de Janeiro.
Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca
Swinguerra
For over a decade, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca have developed a collaborative practice across cinema, visual arts and performance. Their videos and installations are created in dialogue with diverse artists and collectives, combining documentary strategies with narrative layers of fantasy and allegory.
Developed in close collaboration with three competitive dance groups from the peripheries of Recife, Brazil, Swinguerra (2019) celebrates music and dance as powerful forms of self-definition, solidarity, and resistance to the status quo. Presented at the Brazilian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, the work follows performers—many of whom are Black, transgender, nonbinary, or queer—as they rehearse and compete in dance styles including swingueira, brega funk, and passinho da maloca.
Johnathan Onyschuk, Old Growth, 2026. Detail. Esker Foundation Project Space. Photo: Blaine Campbell.
Johnathan Onyschuk
Old Growth
In the Project Space
Until October 25, 2026
Artist Talk with Johnathan Onyschuk: Friday, October, 2, 6–7pm
Old Growth emerges from a persistent image that appears across time and geography: a human face materializing from, or intertwined with, plant matter. From architectural carving motifs in Medieval churches across Europe or in temple complexes ranging from 2nd Century Hatra to 8th Century Rājasthān, to illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, costuming, mosaics, or metalwork, the recurrence of faces in plant form has long existed as a human expression. In the present, spanning workshops and gardens, as well as hobbyist, artistic, and folk traditions, the impulse repeats: to bring together the human and the vegetal.
This installation begins with that repetition. Johnathan Onyschuk has accumulated a collection of anonymous “spirit carvings,” or traditional folk art pieces depicting human faces (often bearded, weathered, and wizened) cut into pieces of wood.
Esker Fall Exhibition and Free Programs Brochure:
Download here
About Esker Foundation
Founded in May 2012, Esker Foundation owes its vision to its founders, Calgary-based collectors & 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 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: 11–6pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12–5pm
Accessibility:
The gallery is barrier-free.
Admission and Programs are free.
Press Contact:
Jill Henderson
Communications & Marketing Lead
Direct Tel: 403 930 2499
Esker Foundation
4th Floor, 1011 9th Avenue SE
Calgary, AB T2G 0H7, Canada
www.eskerfoundation.art
@eskerfoundation
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