Exhibition Opening
Entwined + Nelly-Eve Rajotte: Trees communicate with each other at 220 hertz
December 4
5-9 PM
Join us on Thursday, December 4, from 5 to 9 PM for the opening of two exhibitions curated by Chief Curator Mona Filip, her first at Contemporary Calgary. These projects mark a defining moment for the organization, one that reimagines how artworks engage with our distinctive architecture and its history as a place dedicated to exploring the universe.
Entwined and Nelly-Eve Rajotte: Trees communicate with each other at 220 hertz fully embody this direction. Together, they transform our iconic brutalist building, inviting audiences to move through the gallery in new ways as installations activate spaces like the Atrium, Bow View Hall, Dome, and our exterior. They offer powerful, timely perspectives on our relationship to the land, its ecosystem, and the complex worldviews through which we engage with it.
Entwined features works by nineteen artists and collectives, including Carrie Allison, Sara Angelucci, Alana Bartol, Ari Bayuaji, Katherine Boyer, DaveandJenn, Kuh Del Rosario, Anna Binta Diallo, Emily Jan, Tyler Los-Jones, Qavavau Manumie, Jennifer Murphy, Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed, Sabrina Ratté, Sandra Sawatzky, Adrian Stimson, tīná gúyáńí, Alberta Rose W. / Ingniq, and Xiaojing Yan
A special façade installation by Calgary artist Tyler Los-Jones, supported by The City of Calgary’s Downtown In Motion Grant Program, expands the exhibition beyond the gallery walls, welcoming in our community.
This milestone evening celebrates a bold new chapter for Contemporary Calgary’s programming and our commitment to creating a place of wonder and belonging where everyone is invited to imagine, learn, and understand one another and the world we share, through the power of contemporary art.
Doors Open
5:00 PMRemarks
6:45 PM | AtriumGalleries Close
9:00 PM
FREE and open to all. No registration required.
Presented in collaboration with our December FREE First Thursday event.
Entwined
December 5, 2025—March 15, 2026
Ring Gallery
Carrie Allison, Sara Angelucci, Alana Bartol, Katherine Boyer, DaveandJenn, Kuh Del Rosario, Jennifer Murphy, Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed, Sandra Sawatzky, Adrian Stimson, tīná gúyáńí, Alberta Rose W. / Ingniq, Xiaojing Yan
Dome
Sabrina Ratté
Bow View Hall
Qavavau Manumie, Emily Jan
Atrium
Sara Angelucci, Alana Bartol, Ari Bayuaji, Anna Binta Diallo, Tyler Los-Jones
Unfolding over several spaces of Contemporary Calgary’s iconic building, Entwined brings together works by nineteen artists and collectives from the Prairies and beyond to consider our relationship as humans with the land and all forms of life. Using both natural and manufactured materials and working across different visual media, the artists in this exhibition reflect on urgent issues affecting our ecosystem. They offer converging perspectives on the interdependency of all species, engaging traditional knowledge, mythological beliefs, futuristic imagination, and scientific exploration to articulate artistic strategies that encourage a deeper, empathetic understanding of our connected world.
Notions of ecological resilience interlaced with Indigenous worldviews permeate the works of artists like Carrie Allison who addresses deforestation by beading tree rings in memory of those cut to make way for urban development, and Katherine Boyer who focuses on active quarry pits and their impact upon the surrounding ecosystem. Adrian Stimson creates a baby bumblebee regalia to celebrate both ancestral traditions and nature’s reliance on the hardworking bee. The collective tīná gúyáńí protests ongoing settler colonialism and honors connection to the land after forced removal from their home, while Alberta Rose W. / Ingniq considers land relations within the natural landscape and the built environment. Qavavau Manumie’s sensitive drawings reference Inuit legends to highlight the interspecies dependencies that sustain contemporary life.
The links between environmental concerns, technologies of image production, and the shaping of collective imaginary underlie Sara Angelucci and Anna Binta Diallo’s works that examine and interpret historical or vernacular sources. Tyler Los-Jones’ images confound preconceived Western assumptions of nature as landscape, exposing the role photography plays in the production and the fulfillment of romantic, anthropocentric expectations. Jennifer Murphy uses found materials assembled into sculptural collages to underline the interconnectedness of our world, revealing wonder, chance, care, strength and evolution.
Engaging directly with the materiality of the natural world, Xiaojing Yan highlights the profound bonds we share with the world around us, celebrating the intricate, cyclical nature of life and the ever-present potential for rebirth and transformation. Kuh Del Rosario’s practice is rooted in an intuitive dialogue with everyday materials and organic debris through attuned alchemical processes, cultivating a sensitivity toward evolving ecosystems. Emily Jan crafts hyper-realistic installations of handmade flora and fauna, integrating found objects to compose surreal dioramas that merge science and mythology. Ari Bayuaji recovers plastic materials washed ashore on Indonesian beaches, coaxing them into intricate weavings that transform polluting waste into delicate artworks. Alana Bartol examines resource extraction and concepts of remediation, creating objects, videos and installations that blend research with ritual, stark realities with legends of enchantment, and contemplation with sensorial experience. Herbalist and botanist Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed integrates art with education, providing workshops and tours that seek to reconnect people to nature. In addition, her collaboration with Alana Bartol invites reseeding and recovery of ravaged local flora.
Several artists explore visual narratives in digital or traditional forms, including Sabrina Ratté, who uses 3D animation and video synthesis to investigate the boundaries between material and virtual realms, folklore and scientific knowledge. The duo DaveandJenn interlace social and natural histories with subjective and fantastical landscapes in layered multi-media installations, while Sandra Sawatzky creates a monumental, embroidered tapestry, an ode to the biodiversity of Alberta, evoking the cosmic origins of all creation in stardust.
Intent on drawing attention to the consequences of human actions on the land, these artists passionately advocate for a reconsideration of prevalent anthropocentric outlooks to prioritize the ecosystem’s survival. As development and industry increasingly encroach on the natural environment and gifts of the land are insatiably exploited as resources, a renewed understanding of kinship becomes vital to rebalance excess with responsibility, self-interest with reciprocity, and individual survival with a drive for a common future.
Curated by Mona Filip.
Nelly-Eve Rajotte
Trees communicate with each other at 220 hertz
December 5, 2025—April 19, 2026
In her first Calgary exhibition, Montreal-based artist Nelly-Eve Rajotte presents the large-scale multi-media installation, Trees communicate with each other at 220 hertz (2024). Combining moving image, generative sound, and technological devices that listen through a modular synthesizer connected to a live tree, this immersive, sensory work brings nature, technology and the romantic imagination in dialogue to consider the deeper connections within our ecosystem.
Forests are the lungs of the earth. Trees are sanctuaries, they are our relatives, our teachers, our allies. Poetic or trite statements about the beauty and importance of forests abound, yet human attitudes toward their preservation and care remain fickle. Dark fantasies about the mysteries to be discovered deep in the woods, adventures that provide formative experiences and steel a hero’s resolve, the solace to be found in the trees’ majestic fold, all populate our collective imaginary since childhood, obscuring humbler truths and setting humanity apart from nature.
Exploring both emotional and physical terrains, Rajotte’s installation draws audiences into a space of profound contemplation and communion. While the panoramic vista she creates, inspired by the boreal forest, evokes the sublime landscape tradition of painters like Caspar David Friedrich and J.M.W. Turner, here the viewer is not confronted but embraced. Inviting an intimate encounter between the self and the vastness of the external world, the work opens a path to receptivity and empathy.
Oscillating in and out of visibility, Rajotte’s spectral cinematic space requires the viewer to actively participate, moving between observation and immersion. Through LiDAR scanning, she digitally archives endangered sites, building a three-dimensional memory that considers non-human modes of capturing the landscape. Addressing climate change and the disappearance of species, the work urges reflection on the fragility of the living world and on new forms of technological memory. A trail of breadcrumbs leads us to the understanding that the forest was always home.
Curated by Mona Filip.
Nelly-Eve Rajotte. The trees talk to each other at 220 Hertz, 2024. 3-channel video installation, 4K, colour, generative sound, 25 min, modular synthesizer, electrodes, and tree.
Credits:
VFX artist / Software developer: Codrin-Mihail Tablan Negrei
3D laser expertise – iSCAN 3D: Richard Lapointe
