Revealing the Structure: Censorship and Discrimination

Yafang Shi, Subverting the Structure, photographic collage, 2026

Yafang Shi with contribution of EMILIA-AMALIA and Chinese Feminism Toronto
Revealing the Structure: Censorship and Discrimination

February 18 – 21, 2026
Closing Reception: February 21, 2026, 2 – 5pm
Meet the artist and members of EMILIA-AMALIA and Chinese Feminism Toronto
Ruth Upjohn Gallery, Women’s Art Association of Canada, Toronto

Revealing the Structural: Censorship and Discrimination brings together art, lived experience, and collective resistance to examine the systemic forces that shape censorship and discrimination within public institutions. Rooted in feminist advocacy and contemporary visual practice, the exhibition foregrounds the work of Yafang Shi, whose interdisciplinary approach transforms personal and institutional records into powerful acts of testimony.

Drawing inspiration from Chinese Yuan dynasty painter Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, Shi reimagines the traditional handscroll as a contemporary form of storytelling and resistance. Through expansive photographic collages and layered texts, her work traces lived experiences alongside the shared struggles of marginalized artists navigating opaque systems of power. The scroll format invites viewers to move through the work physically and conceptually, mirroring the unfolding nature of memory, inquiry, and justice.

As a journalist-turned artist, Shi integrates documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests related to her human rights case against the Aurora Public Library and the Town of Aurora. These materials are presented not only as evidence, but as visual and conceptual elements that expose the structures governing institutional decision-making. The exhibition is further shaped through collaboration with two groups that have requested to intervene in her human rights case, EMILIA-AMALIA and Chinese Feminism Toronto, whose contributions underscore the importance of collective action, feminist solidarity, and community-based advocacy. Black box installations created by Chinese Feminism Toronto symbolize the opacity and resistance artists encounter when confronting censorship and discrimination, while EMILIA-AMALIA’s compiled documentation from Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times expands the exhibition into a shared space of dialogue and imagining.

Together, these works form a layered visual language that speaks to censorship and discrimination not as an isolated act, but as a structural condition: one that demands both visibility and collective response.

About Yafang Shi

Yafang Shi is a Chinese settler, feminist, journalist-turned-artist, and poet whose practice explores gender, race, class, censorship, body, identity, and environmental issues through a decolonial, intersectional, and transnational feminist lens. Her work spans long-term documentary projects on social movements for women’s rights and social justice, poetic and emotionally driven creative works, and socially engaged, collaborative public installations.

Shi obtained a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Beginning in 2017, Shi, a veteran journalist, has developed an ongoing documentary practice focused on feminist and social justice movements, alongside evocative visual and textual works that reflect inner emotional landscapes and collective sociopolitical realities. Her artistic approach bridges investigative journalism and visual storytelling, using archival material, institutional records, and personal narrative to challenge systems of excluding and silencing.

Shi’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across art galleries, museums, universities, public libraries, community spaces, and outdoor public sites, including exhibitions at the Contact Photography Festival. Her solo exhibitions have been hosted by the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University. She has also participated in the #MeToo in China exhibition organized by Chinese Feminism Toronto, where she delivered a public talk titled Body, Feminist Art, Censorship, and Activism. Her writing and artwork have been published in the academic journal Migration, Mobility and Displacement, the literature magazine Ricepaper, and Inanna Publications’ anthology Toward the North: And Other Stories by Chinese Canadian Authors, among others. Through both her artistic and advocacy practices, Shi continues to champion artists’ rights to freedom of expression and human rights.

About EMILIA-AMALIA

EMILIA-AMALIA is an intersectional, intergenerational, feminist experimental working group, initiated in Toronto in 2016. The group takes its name and structure from the practice of affidamento—the relationship in which one woman entrusts herself symbolically to another. Learn more at www.emilia-amalia.com.

About Chinese Feminism Toronto

Chinese Feminism Toronto is a grassroots collective engaged in feminist advocacy, transnational activism, and community-based organizing in relation to Sinophone and East Asian feminist and queer movements. Follow their work on Instagram at @cnfeminismto.

About Women’s Art Association of Canada

Since 1887 The Women’s Art Association of Canada is a diverse and inclusive non-profit art hub offering exhibition, education and volunteer opportunities for men and women with a passion for the arts. Two historic gallery spaces on the main floor of the heritage building at 23 Prince Arthur Avenue in Toronto are open to the public.

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the Women’s Art Association of Canada operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to the many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Women’s Art Association of Canada
23 Prince Arthur Avenue
Toronto, ON M5R 1B2
womensartofcanada.ca
waac@womensartofcanada.ca
416-922-2060

Accessibility: The Women’s Art Association of Canada is regretfully not wheelchair accessible, there are steps to enter. For more information, visit womensartofcanada.ca.