Eight Artists, One Fredericton Gallery

Textiles cut and pieced back together, films rooted in Igloolik, and digital worlds shaped by Indigenous futures share a gallery in Fredericton. On November 7, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery opened an exhibition bringing together all eight recipients of the 2026 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.

Where a show lands changes who gets to discover it. Emma Hassencahl-Perley, the Beaverbrook’s curator of Indigenous art, told The Argosy this was the exhibition’s first time in New Brunswick. For her, it was a chance to bring the work of artists and scholars from across the country into her own community.

Look at three of the worlds that meet there. Faye HeavyShield’s sculpture and installations draw on Blackfoot knowledge and family history. Skawennati works with virtual spaces and computer-generated characters. Zacharias Kunuk makes films grounded in his home community of Igloolik. Each starts from a specific place or set of relationships and finds a different way to carry those stories forward.

Chung-Im Kim’s textiles have another connection to New Brunswick. Her nominator, Jessica Veevers, is a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Allison University. In The Argosy, Veevers described how Kim’s materials can hold memory: you can still see the traces of earlier forms after she cuts, layers and reassembles them.

The opening day program listed two free talks, one with four of the honorees and another with Roger Lee on Chinese Yixing teapots. If you’re discovering these artists from farther away, the Canada Council also commissioned short video portraits of all eight with the Independent Media Arts Alliance. They offer a place to start with one artist and follow the work from there.