The Waiting Room
Anne Dahl, Colin Canary, Josi Smit, Masha Granich
Curator: Emma Ongman
Opening July 16th from 5 pm to 8 pm
Anne Dahl’s sculptural assemblages explore the optics of ornament through reclaimed objects, metal, stone, and wood. Rooted in her background as a jeweller, she approaches found materials with care, staging subtle interventions that honour the labour embedded within them and the precarity of their value. Her material processes create an intimate dialogue between body and object, where fragility and weight are held in tension. Through these relationships, Dahl examines how physical presence is mediated by digital culture, considering the ways material and virtual systems shape contemporary experiences of identity and selfhood.
Dahl studied Jewellery Design & Metalsmithing and Intermedia at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University and is currently completing an MFA in Sculpture at Concordia University. In 2025, she received the Tom Hopkins Memorial Graduate Award, and her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Recent exhibitions include IGNITION 20 at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, curated by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre and Nicole Burisch, as well as exhibitions in New York, Montréal, Ottawa, and Gatineau. Her work has been featured in ESPACE art actuel, Metalsmith Magazine, The Globe and Mail, FASHION Magazine, and Clin d’œil.
Colin Canary creates artworks where lyrical circuits of translucent paint leak, pool, dissect, and submerge archival and photographic images. Suspended in a fleeting tranquility, these cinematic scenes begin to disintegrate as overexposed, distorted glimpses of limbs, organs, faces, and flowers drift through the compositions, preserved yet veiled beneath an undertow of painterly prose. Canary’s paintings offer a glimpse into the flora and fauna of dreams, the erosion of memory, the familiar within the unfamiliar, and things that have slipped away: landscapes that exist only in the mind.
Colin Canary (b. Halifax, Nova Scotia) holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University and an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, where he received the Lillian Vineberg Graduate Award in Painting and Drawing and was twice awarded the Tom Hopkins Memorial Graduate Award. Recent exhibitions include Ignition 19 at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, curated by Mojeanne Behzadi, and Reverb at Art Mûr as part of the Pictura Triennale de peinture. His work is held in the Nova Scotia Art Bank’s collection. In 2026, he completed a residency at DUPLEX AIR in Lisbon, Portugal.
Josi Smit is a multidisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, installation, photography, and text. Drawing from personal archives, their work is rooted in lived environments, where private, social, and atmospheric spaces overlap. Some of their current curiosities include: the blurred borders between memories and dreams; photographs fading in the living room sunlight; dance floor reverberations; shifting winds and clouds and breath.
Smit holds a BFA in Sculpture/Installation from OCAD University, where she was awarded the Program Medal and the BMO 1st Art Ontario award for her thesis work. Their work has been supported by two Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation grants, as well as the Ontario Arts Council. Recent exhibitions include Reminds Me of Home at Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto, ON), Milestone Nerve at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Bowmanville, ON), Feedback Loop at MKG127 (Toronto, ON), A View to a Room at Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto, ON), and Crawling Out of a Hidden Place at Arsenal Contemporary (Toronto, ON). Smit is currently expanding their studio practice while studying cabinetmaking.
Masha Granich works primarily in blue ballpoint pen, stained glass, metalwork, and found object installation. Their practice is an experiment in visual autofiction and world-building; drawing influence from immigrant and refugee experiences, oral tradition and a growing personal symbology grounded in ancestral and cultural legacies. Their practice is heavily influenced by a mix of Ukrainian and Slavic practices, where folklore, pagan and Orthodox ritual, and resistance coexist.
Masha Granich is a queer and trans Ukrainian immigrant and multidisciplinary artist. Granich holds a BFA in Art Publications from OCAD University. Recent solo exhibitions include A Wound of Blood and Water at Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay and Like a Dove in La Vitrine of La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse. Their work has also been presented at Maison de la culture du Plateau-Mont-Royal. In 2024, they were selected for the ARTCH cohort and completed a residency at Gare de Matapédia in 2025. Their work is held in the collection of Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay.
RECENT NEWS
Acquisition
Jessica Wee
Artwork joins the University of Toronto Missisauga Collection
Drawing from domestic scenes and quotidian moments, Wee’s paintings weave together personal experiences, art historical references and fantasy.
Press
Andrea Szilasi
Review of Réfléchir in Ciel variable by Alexis Desgagnés
Published in Issue 132 “Tableaux”, Desgagnés offers a thoughtful and generous reflection on the exhibition, capturing the subtle and affective resonance of the works on view.
Museum Exhibition
Yves Tessier
MAC group exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts
Girls on Campus by Tessier will be featured in Comfort and Indifference, an exhibition highlighting recent acquisitions from the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal’s collection.
Press
Bea Parsons
Review of kiyânaw in Border Crossings Magazine by Cameron Skene
Skene traces connections between Parsons’ vibrant pencil crayon drawings and installation, situating them in relation to enduring and contemporary Indigenous currents of thought.
Announcement
Rebecca Munce
Major Public Art Project in Toronto
This public art initiative, developed in collaboration with The Bentway and Exhibition Place, will take the form of a 10,000-square-foot mural spanning a large concrete wall beneath the Gardiner Expressway.
Announcement
Michelle Bui
New Public Artwork for the Réseau express métropolitain
McBride Contemporain is pleased to share a video of Michelle Bui in her studio, recently published by the REM, in which she discusses her permanent public artwork Filets, installed at Station Sainte-Dorothée in Laval.
McBride Contemporain is a contemporary art gallery based in Montreal.