Venue: Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre
Event-date: May 2 - June 13, 2026
Assembly Manual: Sites for Existence is a visual art exhibition that brings together work by Nate McLeod, Morgan Melenka and the artist-duo NASARIMBA, comprised of Mikhail Miller and Rachel Ziriada. Each body of work explores elements of built environments—or sites for existence—including urban / suburban, interior / exterior and private / public space. While the human figure is absent throughout the body of work, we are ever aware that these sites were built by and for humans and so are left to contemplate how we might interact with and relate to them. McLeod’s vignettes of domestic furnishings from his newborn’s nursery were created amidst a period of intense life-changes: becoming a parent and receiving an unexpected medical diagnosis. They remind us that amidst uncertainty, making intentional choices about our interior surroundings is a valid strategy to nurture calm and comfort. Melenka’s intricate prints at once satirize and exalt the artificial, dazzling features of contemporary North American architecture. They interrogate the “why” behind elements that have become ubiquitous in urban and sub-urban environments (including shopping malls), considering darker realities—legacies of colonialism, environmental impacts, homogenization—hiding behind their shimmering veneers. NASARIMBA’s layered collage-paintings revel in the abstraction of urban spaces. The duo starts by harvesting texture, form and colour from hundreds of images of street photography. From there, they construct new compositions that could be interpreted as blueprints for imaginative, playful spaces they aspire to build and occupy. While diverse in many ways, each art piece is ultimately exploring an idea of how humans assemble space, for better or for worse, and the ensuing effects these sites for existence have on the individual and collective psyche. Curated by Sierra Zukowski, TREX Southeast, Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre.
