Hannah Somers: The Music Sang ‘Lean on Me’

An Exhibition Hosted by the Collective City Gallery Project

Hannah Somers, My Hand, Your Back, 2020, inkjet print, 24″ x 24″

Hannah Somers: The Music Sang ‘Lean on Me’

September 23 – October 4, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, September 25, 6–8pm
Artist Talk: October 3, 11–12pm with Hannah Somers and Farihah Aliyah Shah
Dupont Rail Gallery, Toronto

Collective City Arts is proud to present The Music Sang ‘Lean on Me’, an exhibition by artist Hannah Somers, on view Wednesday, September 23 – Sunday, October 4 at the Dupont Rail Gallery. This exhibition is the seventh in a series of eight shows hosted in the 2026 season by the Collective City Arts Gallery Project.

About the Exhibition

In her exhibition, The Music Sang ‘Lean on Me’, Hannah Somers investigates her own identity by returning to her roots, creating visual conversations between her mother and aunt, biracial twin sisters adopted into a white family in the 1960s and raised in Sarnia, Ontario.

Through photography and video, Somers explores the circumstances of their upbringing and its effects on their racial and social identities, examining their role models, relationships, and experiences of visibility within a predominantly white community.

Hannah Somers, Marbles, 2020, inkjet print, 24″ x 24″

Always conscious of the attention they received and the stereotypes that shaped perceptions of their Black identity, the sisters recount growing up without familial connections to their heritage or the Black community. Instead, they found points of identification and belonging through figures in popular culture and the media.

In an ongoing expansion of the project, Somers turns to collage to revisit her mother and aunt’s experiences through her own perspective as a daughter and niece. Drawing on family archives, found imagery, and textiles, she reframes their stories through questions of individuality, visibility, stereotypes, and perception, shaped by their intimate and intergenerational relationship.

In collaboration with Emilie Croning, EMC Contemporary.

Hannah Somers

About the Artist

Hannah Somers is a Tkaronto/Toronto-based artist and curator. Her work centres on the exploration and discovery of time, joy, identity, ethnicity and race, while investigating her own heritage. Understanding the different relationships and histories of these themes is important in her process. She creates narratives within her fine art practice through the use of photography, video, collage, and audio.

Somers received a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University in Image Arts Photography Studies, and has exhibited solo work at Stephen Bulger Gallery, the Alliance Française Gallery, and most recently at The Image Centre with The Music Sang ‘Lean On Me’ (2023). She has also curated group exhibitions at the Artspace Gallery and Gallery 44.

Hannah Somers
hlsomersstudio.com
Instagram @hansom_ers

Farihah Aliyah Shah
www.farihahshah.com
Instagram @rihah

Emilie Croning / EMC Contemporary
www.emccontemporary.com
Instagram @emc.contemporary

Collective City Gallery Project | Upcoming Exhibitions

Jason van Horne & Brian Donnelly
November 18 – 29, 2026

Brian Donnelly: Goin’ Down the Road is an exhibition of video works that explore the City of Toronto through the lens of fiction. Positioned somewhere between piracy and cartography, the work recontextualizes fragments of film footage to shift focus from foreground narrative to background geography. What emerges are surreal documentations of a city evolving over decades, posing questions about the distortion of social identity and contesting the ownership of recorded municipal history.

Jason van Horne: The City. “During the pandemic I had the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it on my mind a lot. While apocalyptic themes have often been a part of my miniature work, the doomsday clock seemed to be getting especially close to midnight. So I started collecting the numerous boxes from online shopping that were coming to our house at the time and turning them into abandoned office towers, crumbling apartment buildings and burnt-out storefronts.”

About The Collective City Gallery Project

The Gallery Project will stage eight shows during the 2026 season, featuring the work of independent artists, arts collectives, and curators not represented by a commercial gallery or institution in the Greater Toronto Region, showcasing their work at no cost.

The Project aims to make the shows accessible to as broad a public as possible, allowing Collective City Arts to provide a public service to the community—a model that does not currently exist in Toronto. For more information about the Collective City Arts Gallery Project, visit The Gallery Project.

To learn more about Collective City Arts, visit the website.

Collective City Arts
www.collectivecity.ca
Facebook @collectivecitystories
YouTube @collectivecity3016
Instagram @collective_city

Dupont Rail Gallery
1444 Dupont Street, Unit 10
Toronto, ON M6P 4H3

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 5pm

Accessibility: Dupont Rail Gallery is fully accessible. For more information, visit Dupont Rail Gallery.