Soft Futures  

April 5 - June 21, 2025

Winnie Truong, Pom Palms, 2024. Coloured pencil, cut paper, mixed media, 15 x 6.5 x 4 inches. Private collection, courtesy of Jen and Ed Kernaghan.

Soft Futures brings together the work of Ashley Beerdat, Rihab Essayh, and Winnie Truong to explore the power of speculative imagination in shaping alternative futures. At a time marked by anxieties relating to climate crisis, social upheaval, and disconnection in the digital age, these artists envision spaces of transformation, resilience, and care. Through an immersive installation, painting, animation, sound, sculptures, and dioramas, the works invite us to slow down, reflect, and imagine futures where softness—both literal and conceptual—becomes a radical force for reconnecting with nature, each other, and ourselves.

Each artist offers a unique vision that intertwines vulnerability, imagination, and connection. For Essayh, this is achieved by creating a sanctuary under the canopy of a tent, inviting contemplation and collective care, where softness transforms into a force for empathy and resilience. Beerdat channels the power of imagination to navigate uncertainty, using painting to explore the evolving relationship between nature, time, and renewal. Truong blurs the lines between the human and botanical, crafting hybrid beings that challenge our understanding of identity and beauty, while also inviting us to reconsider the interconnectedness of all life. Collectively, their works open new possibilities for healing and growth.

About the artists:

Ashley Beerdat is a painter, muralist and arts educator based in the GTA. She has a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Western University and her MFA from the University of Waterloo. Her work is held in Mississauga’s permanent corporate art collection and has been exhibited at KWAG gallery, The Body Shop Studios, Small Arms Inspection Building, Latitude 53, The Artist Project and Withrow common gallery. Passionate about public art, Ashley has painted murals for the city of Brampton, Mississauga, and Toronto. She also serves as an advisory member of the XOXO Downsview Advisory Committee, contributing to the work plan for Downsview Park's public art programming. Ashley is also a recipient of the SHRCC Doctoral Fellowship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the Walter Metzger Memorial Award.

Rihab Essayh was born in Morocco and raised in Montreal. Essayh is an interdisciplinary artist whose large-scale, immersive installations create spaces of slowing down and softening. Her research considers issues of isolation and disconnection in the digital age, imagining futurities of soft-strength and social reconnection by proposing a heightened attunement to colour, costume, tactility and sound. She completed her MFA at the University of Guelph in 2022. Her work has been shown at the Art Council of Montreal (Montreal), La Centrale Powerhouse Gallery (Montreal), Never Apart (Montreal), the plumb (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Guelph (Guelph), Union Gallery (Kingston), Arsenale (Toronto), and Mcbride Contemporain (Montreal).

Winnie Truong is a Toronto artist working with drawing and collage to explore ideas of identity, feminism, and fantasy along with a digital art and animation practice that includes public art and community engagement. She has exhibited across Canada, the US and Europe with solo presentations at Volta New York Art Fair, Pulse Miami Art Fair and Art Toronto. Truong is a 2017 recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship. Her work can be found in private collections, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto, Bank of Denmark, EQ Bank, Canada Council Art Bank Collection, Scotiabank Fine Art Collection, RBC Art Collection and TD Bank Corporate Art Collection.

Opening Reception: Saturday April 5, 2025 from 2:00pm to 4:00pm

Panel Discussion: Saturday April 5, 2025 from 1:00pm to 2:00pm