Sep 20 to Jan 11, 2025
Sights of Convergence
About the Exhibition
Sights of Convergence features work by Jess Riva Cooper (Toronto, ON), Gabriela García-Luna (Saskatoon, SK), and Stanzie Tooth (Toronto, ON). Each artist brings a distinct material practice and set of concerns to their work, yet all explore the intimate entanglement of human and natural worlds. Rather than treating nature as a passive backdrop, their works invite us to consider a more nuanced, reciprocal exchange, one shaped by perception, memory, and lived experience. Beneath the surface, unsettling realities emerge: anxiety, tension, loss, and the shadow of ecological catastrophe. In this shared space, the gallery becomes a meeting ground, where diverse expressions converge and conversations between works and ideas can take root, grow, and expand.
Curated in response to Kejie Lin’s solo project in the adjacent gallery, the exhibition extends its inquiry, bringing together a plurality of voices and artistic approaches that reflect on the complexities of the environment we inhabit. Across the exhibition, the natural world is not merely observed—it is felt, remembered, and critically questioned.
About the Artists
Jess Riva Cooper is a Toronto-based multi-media artist whose work integrates clay, drawing, and other materials to create intricate sculptures and installation-based artworks. Her pieces often explore themes of mythology, nature, and transformation, blending human and botanical imagery in ways that evoke vulnerability and resilience. In her sculptures, nature reclaims space, with plant forms sprouting, creeping over structures, and creating preternatural transformations that subvert order and invite chaos.
Cooper holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) and a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Her artistic practice is shaped by residencies at Medalta, The Archie Bray Foundation, and the Kohler Arts/Industry Program, among others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto and the Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London. Through her sculptures, Cooper addresses ecological concerns and cultural storytelling, encouraging reflection on the interconnectedness of life, decay, and renewal.
Gabriela García-Luna is a multimedia artist of Mexican artist based in Saskatchewan, Canada. Her practice based on photography merges analogue and digital mediums through drawing, printmaking, video and installation. Her experience-based work explore the interconnectedness of the natural world in relation human experience and its parallels though ideas of unity, separation, fragility, resilience, presence and absence. In her research, she has explored the geography of the places she has call home in Mexico, India and Saskatchewan, relating to the memory imprinted in the human experience and in the land. Some of her research in the recent years is related to the Saskatchewan River as the conduit of life throughout space and time and among the many different communities of living species that have inhabited its geography.
Her work has bee exhibited in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, Canada, UK and India and her practice includes community engagement projects which she has led in Mexico, Canada and India. She has received grants and awards from FONCA (National Foundation for Culture and Art Fellowship in Mexico, The Saskatchewan Arts Board and Canada Council of the Arts among others. Her work is part of public and private national and international collections Including the Galería Libertad and Colección Omnilife, Mexico, TD Bank, Saskatchewan Arts Board, MacKenzie Art Gallery and Global Affairs Canada. She holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Saskatchewan and a BDes from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Mexico City.
Stanzie Tooth‘s paintings are deeply intertwined with the forests of southern Ontario, where she spent her formative years. Her accumulated bodies of work draw inspiration from the rich tapestry of art history yet strives to capture a narrative that resonates with a more bodily and intersectional experience.
Tooth earned her BFA from OCAD University and obtained an MFA with distinction from the University of Ottawa. In 2015, she was honoured with the Joseph Plaskett Award for Painting, facilitating her residencies in Berlin, Iceland, Greece, and Italy. Tooth’s contributions have been recognized by Canadian Art Magazine, The Toronto Star, and Now Magazine. Her paintings are included in private and corporate collections, such as The Royal Bank, Toronto Dominion Bank, A.T. Tolley Collection, Equitable Bank, Google Collection, the City of Ottawa, and St. Michael’s Hospital. Tooth is based in Toronto, Canada.
