SUM GALLERY

Artist-in-Residence: Deon Feng

Dec 17 – Jan 14, 2026

We’re pleased to welcome our first artist in residence of 2026 Deon Feng to SUM gallery, Dec 17 – Jan 14, 2026. Join us on Saturday, January 10 for a special SUM gallery Open House event, Service Surface.

Inspired by the artist’s personal experience working at a Chinese restaurant in Paris, Service Surface is the result of a month-long exploration into the tenuous negotiations between artistic creation and racialized service labour. Specifically, the residency examines “the Chinese restaurant” no longer as a backdrop in service, but as its own creative site of culture-making. Featuring artefacts of time theft on the job, ephemera from SUM gallery’s own surrounding restaurants, and photographs of the artist’s DIY bedroom-darkroom, this new body of work presents the messy metonymies between labour and art, service and surface. “Where should we go after the reception?”

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

冯棣盎 Deon Feng, (b.2002, “Vancouver”, BC) is an artist. They are accredited with a BA in Political Humanities from the Paris Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Po) and a BA in Visual Arts from UBC. Their work has been shown in solo projects at Artspeak Off-site and The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford. Recent group exhibitions include Winterlong (People), Grad Ex (AHVA Gallery UBC), and Essential Pleasures New Happiness (Malaspina Howe Street Studios). Feng’s writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Cloud Lake Literary, and on CiTR 101.9FM, where they occasionally make playlists and sound experiments. Feng currently lives in Paris.

Gender Mutual

Jan 22 – Feb 27, 2026

SUM gallery’s first exhibition of 2026, Gender Mutual brings together six trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming artists — Liam Murley, Taliruq, Dee Twentee, Paige Bowman, Addison Finch, and curator-artist Jamie Lauder — whose practices illuminate the deeply personal, expansive, and often nonlinear journeys of living beyond the gender binary. Following a month-long residency at SUM gallery, the exhibition foregrounds self-determined narratives, embodied histories, and the many ways gender is shaped, challenged, and reimagined across diverse lived experiences. Through painting, textile art, photography, media work, and costume design, Gender Mutual amplifies voices often overshadowed, inviting audiences into a space of reflection, resonance, and possibility.

Join us for the Opening Reception on Thursday, January 22, 5–9pm.
Please note: to accommodate members of our community, from 5–6pm the Opening Reception will be masks mandatory; from 6pm to close, masks are recommended. Masks and hand sanitizer will be available at the reception desk.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Jamie Lauder (they/he/she) is a UK born, Canadian raised Artist, Illustrator + Tattooist living in so called Vancouver Canada. Primarily a self-taught artist with a background in design and education. Their practice ranges from 3 dimensional light pieces to drawing, multimedia, screen printing and tattooing. The direction of their work has been deeply influenced by queer and tattoo culture with a focus on creating images that explore vulnerable masculinity and challenge gender stereotypes. They are co-founder of Homebody Tattoo, a queer focused tattoo collective located in Vancouver.

@mxlauder

Liam Murley (they/she) is an interdisciplinary artist who’s practice explores queer identity and culture through storytelling. Their experience as a transgender person motivates them to take control of their presentation and personal narrative through conventions of drag both physically and sonically. Queer nightlife, the nuances of intimacy, and experiences of religious trauma inspire them to create performances that transport people. Their goal is to escape reality by writing new stories and explore being different people.

@liam.lovelock

Taliruq (he/him) is a transmasc Inuk artist and tattooer. Originally from the north, he grew up in the Canadian prairies and is currently based in so-called ‘Vancouver’. He works in a variety of mediums including tattooing, digital illustration, and fibre art, exploring themes of queerness, identity, and the other, often through a lense of anthropomorphism and nonhuman representation.

@taliruq

Paige Bowman (they/them) is a nonbinary settler born and raised on the unceded territory of the LEKWUNGEN and WSANEC peoples (“Victoria”) and currently residing in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (“Vancouver”). They are a working illustrator who uses predominantly traditional materials within the context of painting, animation, mural, and sculpture. Their work is inspired by folklore, storytelling, identity and connection to our natural world. Bright palettes and bold shapes make up the bulk of their practice, as well as embracing accidental mark making and the unpredictable nature of damaged materials and surfaces.

@birdfingersss

Addison Finch (he/him) Addison Finch is a queer, trans, mixed tattooer & illustrator. Having come out as trans over 16 years ago, he’s interested in the ways that our genders and the way that we speak about them both personally and culturally have shifted over time. His practice is influenced by tattoo culture, queer community, and leather and kink history, with a particular focus on the reclamation of gender and identity through art and body modification.

@zebrafiinches

Dee Twentee (they/he) is a gay and trans masculine artist, educator, performer, and designer who has been dabbling in fiber arts since they were a teen. Dee’s cross-stitch pieces aim to give visibility to their community’s triumphs, history, and hardships. Putting hundreds and thousands of tiny Xs into fabric has allowed Dee to process and share their gender journey over the past six years. They are also overjoyed that their designs have also created space so that trans and queer stitchers feel seen in a traditionally cis-gendered, heteronormative craft. Dee uses their educational background to pair additional pedagogic moments to their work, such as their 12-month craft and learn-along program, Stitch4Pride.

@dees20stitches

SUM AiR — Makoto Chi

Sept 13 – Oct 15, 2025

SUM gallery is excited to continue our SUM-AiR (SUM gallery Artist-in-Residence) program with interdisciplinary artist Makoto Chi. Beginning September 13, Makoto joins us for a month-long residency in advance of his solo exhibition at SUM gallery, opening October 16, presented in partnership with Powell Street Festival Society. Welcome, Makoto!

ABOUT MAKOTO CHI

Makoto Chi is a visual artist, born and raised in Canada and currently based in Western Massachusetts. His formal training and practice span tattooing, drawing, and painting, with forays into sculpture and installation. These disciplines cross-pollinate, merging tattoo motifs, illustrative narrative, and linework-heavy figuration into a personal visual language.

His work centres monstrous and chimeric figures as stand-ins for inner psychological landscapes, experiences, and observations around the communities he inhabits. Entangled in ambiguous, libidinous states of conflict and intimacy, figuration is a site for Makoto to explore queer eros, ritual, diasporic longing for placeness, and liminal thresholds between tenderness and brutality. He refracts witnessed experiences and inherited stories through the lens of hybridity and self-invention, while creating space for viewers to locate themselves within the work.

Makoto’s practice is deeply informed by the visual cultures, mythologies, and spiritualities of his Japanese and Ashkenazi Jewish heritages, as well as his queer, gendered experiences. In these intertwined histories—marked paradoxically by exile, internment, and grave violence—he finds fertile ground for reimagining. The erotic charge within anthropomorphic and hybrid bodies becomes a means to rupture traditional narratives, re-knitting severed connections with familial ancestorhood and generating new, unexpected meanings.

While his work is shaped by identity, it is not bound to it. He seeks to communicate across cultural boundaries, engage with the possibilities and contradictions of freedom of movement, and dwell in the generative space of in-betweenness.

Makoto graduated from Emily Carr University with a BFA in Illustration in 2015. He has been tattooing since 2004/05, and currently lives at Lupinewood Collective, a majority trans, all-queer intentional collective living project in Western Massachusetts.

SHAPESHIFTERS — Curated by Carmen Levy-Milne | Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna

Sept 12 – Oct 25, 2025

For the first time ever, SUM gallery is expanding our activities to the Okanagan, thanks to a partnership with Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna! We’re proud to be a part of their Shapeshifters exhibition, curated by Carmen Levy-Milne.

In this exhibition, the collaborative artist trio Kendell Yan, Chris Reed, and Romi Kim will explore the intersections of queer monsters inspired by myths and stories from their unique cultures. A common thread woven through Chinese, Cree, and Korean folklore is the notion of shapeshifters, fictional beings that can transform themselves from one physical form into another. Including a series of lenticular printed photographs, an exploratory film, a performance, and a community centered workshop, the artists come to this project representing stories from their respective heritages while considering the intersections and compatibility between these folktales and their drag personas and gender identities.

Locals and visitors to Kelowna are welcome to the join the opening reception; 6 – 8pm on Friday September 12th. This special opening includes a live performance by Yan, Reed, and Kim; you don’t want to miss this! The opening is free and open to the public, with light snacks and refreshments provided.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Shapeshifters are a multidisciplinary QTIPOC artist collective based on the stolen lands of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Romi Kim (they/them) , Chris Reed (they/them), and Kendell Yan (she/they) are close friends, drag performers and accomplices. Also known as SKIM (he/him), Continental Breakfast (they/them) and Maiden China (she/they).

Shapeshifters have been collaborating since 2022. Their artistic practice is rooted in collective care, cultural and community histories, kinship, and queer liberation. Shapeshifters have exhibited work at Sum gallery (2022), the Vancouver Queer Film Festival (2023), James Black Gallery (2023), and Queer Arts Festival (2023).

Carmen Levy-Milne (she/her) is a curator and cultural worker born and raised on the unceded land of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm people. As a diasporic Jewish settler, her practice is primarily concerned with the philosophy of tikkun olam (“the repair of the world”), where she sees her work in the arts sphere as responsible for uplifting reparative, decolonial, and critical artistic responses to our broader social, political, and cultural circumstances. She holds an MA in Critical & Curatorial Studies from UBC and a BA in Communication and Cultural Studies with a Minor in Religion and Cultures from Concordia University. Her work has been featured by the AHVA Gallery, the Burnaby Art Gallery, Centre A, Deer Lake Gallery, and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.

Presented in partnership with Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, thanks to generous support from the Canada Arts Presentation Fund, administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

DARK WREATH — Babe Siegl | THIS Gallery

Sept 26 – Oct 5, 2025

We’re so happy to be a community partner for THIS Gallery‘s upcoming exhibition: a solo show by our very own Babe Siegl!

Babe Siegl’s Dark Wreath merges digital precision with the tactile richness of oil painting to explore the complexities of queer identity in a digital age. His surreal, vividly chromatic compositions shimmer with artificial reflections, gendered symbols, and dreamlike figures that reflect cycles of harm—shame, toxic masculinity, and internalized prejudice—caught in endless loops. Yet alongside melancholy lies humour and vitality: his characters, playful as toys or avatars, embody queerness as fluid, adaptive, and ever-becoming. Through this hybridity of medium and meaning, Siegl reveals the tension and resilience at the heart of contemporary queer experience.

Join us for the opening reception on Saturday, September 27, from 12 – 4pm at THIS Gallery (108 East Broadway, back alley entrance).

ABOUT BABE SIEGL

Benjamin/Babe Siegl (he/him) is a painter, animator, and occasional curator based in Vancouver. His work explores contemporary queer identity through the lenses of painting, drawing, animation, and digital media. Originally from Florida, Siegl holds a BFA from Florida State University (2011) and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2017). He is a long-term staff member of the Pride in Art Society, a Vancouver-based queer arts charity.

An Auspicious Beast — Makoto Chi

Oct 16 – Dec 6, 2025

Using materials as disparate as Sumi ink, blood, and spit, Makoto Chi creates images of yokai and golems as an exploration of queerness, myth, and cultural heritage. Twelve new pieces, presented kakejiku-style throughout SUM gallery, complement a mural painted directly onto the gallery’s east wall.

Join us for the opening reception on October 16. Please note: to accommodate members of our community, from 5 – 6pm the Opening Reception will be masks mandatory; from 6pm to closing the reception will be masks recommended. Masks and hand sanitizer will be provided at the reception desk.

Further please join us for a “Make Your Own Yokai” linocut print workshop + artist talk on October 25, presented in partnership with Powell Street Festival Society. Workshop participation is 18+.

ABOUT MAKOTO CHI

Emancipation Day — FREE Events at SUM Gallery

Gallery Exhibition | Drag & Burlesque Performances | Spoken Word Celebration

August 1st is Emancipation Day and we’re celebrating with a week of events at SUM gallery!

What is Emancipation Day, you ask? It’s the day in 1834 when the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect across the British Empire. We’re partnering with our friends at Hogan’s Alley to present a week of stirring art and riveting performance, all viewed through a uniquely queer Black lens.

August 1 | 7–9 PM
We’re kicking things off with a night of jaw-dropping performances featuring Mx. Bukuru, As*trix Banks, Velvet Ryder, Saint Solstice, Rainbow Glitz, Luna Buckster, and spins by DJ Grooveheart! Join us for a special reception featuring food by local Black-owned restaurants. This event is 18+.

August 1–8, open daily 12 – 6pm*
August 1st also sees the launch of our weeklong exhibition, featuring the interdisciplinary work of Valérie d. Walker and the SUM gallery debut of Uzo, a young fashion designer focussing on crochet couture! *Note: SUM gallery will be closed Monday, August 4th.

August 3 | 2 PM
Spoken word and poetry take centre-stage on Sunday afternoon as Addena Sumter-Freitag, April Sumter-Freitag, and Siobhan Barker present work that is at turns fearless, moving, and raunchy.

All of our events are FREE to attend but registration is recommended.

We’re located at #425, 268 Keefer St. See you there!

RSVP FOR FREE

Unsavoury Witness — Alejandro A. Barbosa

Apr 16 – Jun 6, 2025

Unsavoury Witness is a photo-based installation that includes laser-engraved photographs, photographic murals, intermedia, print media, and court transcripts from the Supreme Court of British Columbia on the 2001 murder of Aaron Webster in Stanley Park. This immersive exhibition foregrounds homophobia’s intimate connections with public spaces, institutionalised systems, societal responses, queer bodies, and desire.

Alejandro A. Barbosa combines photography and excerpt with placemaking to conceptualise pause as an agency of justice. By working from official documents and media archives surrounding a pivotal case in the history of homophobic violence in Canada, they complicate the certainties of queer pleasure and integrate the inconsistencies of justice when prejudice, silence, and risk intersect desire. Within the safety of SUM gallery, the exhibition is crafted as a diorama where artist and viewer intersect the public figure of the witness toward a queer ethics of memorialisation. Unsavoury Witness is Alejandro A. Barbosa’s debut solo presentation in Canada, their first with SUM gallery, and is curated by long-time mentor Patryk Stasieczek.

Unsavoury Witness is generously supported by The Parachute Fund and the Deux Mille Foundation. This exhibition is part of the 2025 Capture Photography Festival Selected Exhibition Program.

ABOUT ALEJANDRO A. BARBOSA

Alejandro A. Barbosa (they/he) is a 2SLGBTQIA+ latinx visual artist and curator born in Argentina who lives and works on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples—the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Alejandro’s practice focuses on lens-based media and investigates the flaws of representation, queer lived experience, and the politics of looking. Alejandro holds an MFA in visual art from the University of British Columbia, and a BFA in photography from Concordia University. They work as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of British Columbia and Non-regular Faculty at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Their work has been exhibited and collected in Canada, Argentina, Peru, and the United States.

ABOUT PATRYK STASIECZEK

Patryk Stasieczek is a Polish Canadian 2SLGBTQIA+ visual artist and curator currently working as an Assistant Professor of Photography at NSCAD University. Patryk’s practice explores photography as an embodied, interdisciplinary queering of image histories, actions, and materials. Their research is informed by their investment in pedagogy and delves into the emergent conditions of photography and the physical relationships images create as forms of experiential knowledge. Patryk’s work as an artist and curator has been featured in collaboration with the Pensacola Museum of Art (USA), Peripheral Review (CA), Centre Clark (CA), Libby Leshgold Gallery (CA), and the Magenta Foundation (CA).

Mirrors — Michael Morris and Dion Smith-Dokkie

Feb 6 – Apr 4, 2025

Mirrors presents a series of watercolour nudes created by Michael Morris during his Berlin residency in the 1980s. Unique in Morris’ predominantly abstract oeuvre, these paintings depict hustlers, artists, and friends, many of them posing in front of a mirror, so that their form could be captured from different angles. Some three dozen nudes, none of which have ever been exhibited publicly, are presented alongside six newly commissioned paintings — “reflections” on Morris’ work — by West Moberly First Nations artist Dion Smith-Dokkie. Curated by Rodney Sharman, Mirrors reflects on how the queer community’s relationship with AIDS has changed over the last forty years while highlighting the myriad issues that younger queer people continue to face today. Morris’ nudes, painted daily during the height of the AIDS crisis, create a body of overtly queer expression that is sensual, colourful, and safe, a private reflection of community at a time when queer people were very much villainized. By contrast, Smith-Dokkie’s works turn the viewer’s gaze upon himself: these nude self-portraits, situated in the bedroom or the bathhouse, are a sensuous, intimate, and vulnerable departure from the artist’s otherwise abstract body of work.

Join us for the opening reception on February 6, from 6 – 9pm, where both Smith-Dokkie and Sharman will be in attendance. SUM gallery is grateful for the time, guidance, and generosity of Michael Morris’ longtime partner, Rahmi Emin, as well as the support of the Parachute Foundation, the Audain Foundation, the Deux Mille Foundation, and the BC Arts Council.

ABOUT MICHAEL MORRIS

Michael Morris (1942–2022), a pioneering abstract painter and printmaker, made enduring contributions to film, photography, video, installation, and performance. Achieving international acclaim early, he helped shape Vancouver’s 1960s art scene and is celebrated for his collaborative practice and versatility as an artist, curator, and cultural leader. In 1970, Morris co-founded Image Bank with Vincent Trasov, a conceptual platform for mail art projects involving figures like Eric Metcalfe and General Idea. He later co-founded the Western Front Society, an artist-run centre for new art across disciplines. Morris passed away in Victoria, BC, on November 18, 2022, at age 80.

ABOUT DION SMITH-DOKKIE

Dion Smith-Dokkie (he/they) lives and works between northeast BC and Vancouver. A painter by trade, he is interested in topics like location and place, infrastructure, communication, and the body. This body of work marks a return to figuration and easel painting, in the wake of Michael Morris and in response to his watercolour nudes. Dion holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Recent shows include The Inaugural Lind Biennial at the Polygon Gallery, Land Breaths at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, and it hides in the light at The Bows in Calgary. Artistic philandering aside, Dion is a shy gay man and a member of West Moberly First Nations.

ABOUT RODNEY SHARMAN

Rodney Sharman, curator, is an internationally acclaimed composer, performer, educator, and arts advocate based on Musqueam territory in Vancouver. Currently the Victoria Symphony’s Composer-Mentor-in-Residence, he has held residencies with Early Music Vancouver, the Victoria Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Dr. Sharman was President of the Canadian League of Composers (1993–98) and the Canadian Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (1991–95), returning in 2016 to support Vancouver’s World New Music Days. He has served as President of the ISCM’s Canadian Section since 2019, continuing a career dedicated to championing contemporary music and fostering artistic collaboration.

Curatorial Cocktails

Curatorial Cocktails: Curator Talk with Rodney Sharman — Apr 4, 6 pm

On April 4 we bring our Mirrors exhibition to a close with Curatorial Cocktails featuring our exhibition curator, Rodney Sharman. Join us for an informal chat at the gallery, where Rodney will give his unique insights into the paintings of both Michael Morris and Dion Smith-Dokkie: how these particular works are unusual for both artists and how each responds to queer issues of their time.

To celebrate this event we’ll be serving specially curated cocktails, available by donation, made by our very own mixologist-in-residence, Tabitha McIntyre!

For the art collectors out there, this will also be an opportunity to purchase works by both Michael Morris and Dion Smith-Dokkie. For price lists and more information, please reach out directly to SUM gallery director Mark Takeshi McGregor: mark@queerartsfestival.com.

This artist talk is free to attend but registration is required as space is limited.