Folio (detail), 2024, archival pigment print, 30″ x 90″.

Unfamiliar Portraits
Geoffrey Lok-Fay Cheung

February 26 – March 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 1, 2 – 5pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, March 15, 1 – 2pm
The Red Head Gallery, Toronto

The Red Head Gallery is excited to exhibit Unfamiliar Portraits by Geoffrey Lok-Fay Cheung.

Exhibition Statement

Unfamiliar Portraits examines the complex relationship between queer identity and familial legacy through conceptual photography, wax sculptures, and textiles. Engaging with materials that speak to both domesticity and ritualistic transformation, the works explore the ambiguity of familial structures and ancestral reverence. The exhibition functions as a site of transformation, an alt-historical archive which seeks to amplify voices that have been silenced or omitted from generational storytelling.

Through various media, including the artist’s own physical presence, the work creates space for untold narratives that didn’t conform to heteronormative expectations. Uncertainty and speculation give way to fiction and assertion, as everyday materials become markers of presence and absence. This multimedia installation continues an ongoing investigation of intergenerational memory and identity through a queer Asian-Canadian lens, inviting viewers to contemplate their own relationship with inherited histories and cultural identity.

Bowing, 2024, archival pigment print, 60″ x 45″.

Artist Talk

Join us for a conversation with the artist on Saturday, March 15, 1-2pm, moderated by Kristofer Sakamoto-Marshall of The New Other. In this talk, Cheung will discuss his exhibition Unfamiliar Portraits, exploring themes of identity, familial legacy, and cultural inheritance. The artist will share insights into his creative process, the vulnerability of placing himself in front of the camera, and his explorations of ceremony and ritual. The conversation will explore how memory and imagination can create more resilient and compassionate connections across generations, fostering better intergenerational understanding.

The artist will also be present in the gallery during regular hours on March 15.

Residuals, 2024, archival pigment print, 9″ x 12″.

Artist Bio

Geoffrey Lok-Fay Cheung (he/him) is an artist examining the way bodies hold and transform memories, from its compaction against familial narrative legacies, to its dilation through ritual and ceremony. Cheung’s practice is guided by diverse material and disciplinary traditions, creating works—including print, video, and installations—that incorporate photographic images, organic materials, and digital processes. His exploration of personal identity and cultural inheritance is informed by his lived experience as a queer second-generation Canadian settler of Chinese descent. His work synthesizes scientific and metaphysical perspectives, informed by his background as a Master of Science graduate from the University of Toronto. Cheung currently works and lives on the traditional First Nation territories of Tkaronto, also known as Toronto, as well as the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, also known as Vancouver. He obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree in 2024 from Emily Carr University.

View past work here: geoffreycheungart.com

The Red Head Gallery
401 Richmond St West, Suite 115
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
www.redheadgallery.org
info@redheadgallery.org
416 504 5654

Gallery hours:
Wednesday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm

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