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.
Register for the opening reception here:
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).
