Summer 2026 Exhibitions: Boring Earth & Rosalie Favell at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Boring Earth, installation view of a sliver is a seed, 2026. Courtesy of Or Gallery, photo by Blaine Campbell.

Boring Earth: spontaneous gift

July 18 – November 15, 2026
Opening Reception + Artist Talk: Saturday, July 18, 2 – 4pm
Curated by Darryn Doull

KWAG is pleased to welcome Boring Earth for a major new installation—spontaneous gift. Boring Earth is an Earth-based collective concerned with discrepant, more-than-human worldings and the portals that jamb between. Their research considers eclipsed and emergent modalities of socionatural relations, muddling extractive dualities through pluriversal inquiry, elemental knowing, and play.

About the Artists

Convened by artists Patrick Cruz and Laila Fox, and a slippery roster of rocky, watery, animal, vegetal, ethereal, and bacterial bodies, Boring Earth challenges the One-World myth, conjuring plural ways of perceiving/believing/relating across urbanized and invisible ecosystems. Boring Earth has recently exhibited at Proof of Life at the Jackman Humanities Institute, curated by Chloë Gordon-Chow; shell sounding long at Paul Petro (Toronto, Canada); and Fae Fae Fi Fi Fou Fou, a project with Moire’s Catwalk (Toronto, Canada). Currently, they have a solo exhibition, a sliver is a seed, at Or Gallery (Vancouver, Canada) from May 12 to August 9, 2026.

Rosalie Favell, My First Day of Assimulation, 1996 (remastered 2024), from the series from an early age. Image courtesy of the artist.

Rosalie Favell | Belonging (1982-2024)

August 8 – November 22, 2026
Opening Celebration: Friday, August 7, 7 – 10pm
Curated by Ryan Rice
Organized and circulated by Onsite Gallery

Belonging is the first retrospective of renowned Red River Métis artist Rosalie Favell, showcasing a powerful curated selection of her lens-based works from 1982 to 2024. This exhibition celebrates Favell’s groundbreaking photographic practice—from seminal series like Living Evidence and Plain(s) Warrior Artist to her expansive archive Facing the Camera—which invites us to bear witness and explore the complex themes of identity, empowerment, same-sex desire, community and the nuanced search for belonging through a lens that is both deeply personal and subtly subversive.

Favell has deployed photography as a critical practice to navigate complex identities, personal and collective, that focus on strategies of empowerment, the archive and family ties, nationhood and making visible, public and private, issues of sexuality. Amassing her works from across her creative journey from her ground-breaking series Living Evidence (1993) to the ongoing comprehensive archive Facing the Camera, we bear witness to Favell’s photographic explorations that emulate the complex longing desires to locate a sense of autonomy to belong amongst many.

About the Artist

Rosalie Favell is a photo-based artist, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and living in Ottawa, ON. Drawing inspiration from her family history and Métis (Cree/English) heritage, she uses a variety of sources, from family albums to popular culture, to present a complex self-portrait of her experiences as a contemporary Indigenous woman. To date Rosalie’s work has explored the relation of photography to issues of identity. A major critical body of work, Facing the Camera (2008-ongoing), is the largest documentation of Indigenous artists (450+), representative of different cities, nations and countries.

Over the course of her long career, Favell’s work has appeared in exhibitions in Canada, the US, Edinburgh, Scotland, Paris, France, Taipei, Taiwan and Melbourne, Australia. Numerous institutions have acquired her artwork including National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (Ottawa), Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.), and Global Affairs, Canada. She has received numerous grants and won prestigious awards such as the Ontario Arts Foundation – Paul DeHuek/Norman Walford Career Achievement Award, the Chalmers Fellowship, the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunten Award and the Karsh Award.

A graduate of Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, Rosalie holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico and a PhD (ABD) from Carleton University in Cultural Mediations. In 2022, she received an Honorary Doctorate (PhD) from OCAD University (Toronto, ON). In Ottawa, Rosalie has taught at Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, and Discovery University.

About Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Since 1956, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG) has been Waterloo Region’s leading public art gallery, connecting people and ideas through art. Its nationally acclaimed exhibitions and programs welcome all to be inspired and challenged through a deepened understanding of ourselves, our cultures, and our communities. Now celebrating 70 years, the Gallery cares for a permanent collection of over 4,400 works and continues to offer dynamic public programs that inspire creativity and an appreciation of the visual arts in the Region and beyond. Admission is free.

Accessibility: KWAG is an accessible venue.

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
101 Queen Street North
Kitchener, ON N2H 6P7
www.kwag.ca

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Rosalie Favel | Belonging (1982-2024) is possible due to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (an agency of the Government of Ontario), Terra Foundation for American Art, Toronto Arts Council, and The Delaney Family. The exhibition is presented with the support of KWAG’s Women for Women’s Art.