CARTOGRAPHIES OF LONGING
Group Exhibition at Doris McCarthy GallerySeptember 15 – December 5, 2026
Tkaronto / Toronto
Works by Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich, Nour Bishouty, Amanda Boulos, Deanna Bowen, Christian Chapman, Meryl McMaster, Arthur Shilling, Travis Shilling & Shellie Zhang
Curated by Sandy Saad-Smith
Cartographies of Longing brings together artists whose practices draw upon family histories, oral traditions, and archival fragments to map intergenerational relationships to land. Through painting, photography, film, installation, and mixed media, the artists engage with ancestral memory to reveal histories that are often beyond the limits of official archives.
Throughout the exhibition, past and present unfold simultaneously, shaped by migration, colonialism, environmental transformation, and the enduring legacies of displacement. Rather than presenting land as a fixed geography, the exhibition approaches it as a living archive, continually formed through memory, storytelling, movement, and lived experience.
By foregrounding cycles of return, rupture, and renewal, Cartographies of Longing considers how relationships to place are continually remade across generations. The artists create space to imagine new relationships with the lands they remember and inhabit, and longing becomes a generative force that restores memory and sustains cultural continuity.
Curated by Sandy Saad-Smith
Cartographies of Longing brings together artists whose practices draw upon family histories, oral traditions, and archival fragments to map intergenerational relationships to land. Through painting, photography, film, installation, and mixed media, the artists engage with ancestral memory to reveal histories that are often beyond the limits of official archives.
Throughout the exhibition, past and present unfold simultaneously, shaped by migration, colonialism, environmental transformation, and the enduring legacies of displacement. Rather than presenting land as a fixed geography, the exhibition approaches it as a living archive, continually formed through memory, storytelling, movement, and lived experience.
By foregrounding cycles of return, rupture, and renewal, Cartographies of Longing considers how relationships to place are continually remade across generations. The artists create space to imagine new relationships with the lands they remember and inhabit, and longing becomes a generative force that restores memory and sustains cultural continuity.