Folio (detail), 2024, archival pigment print, 30” x 90”.
Unfamiliar Portraits
Geoffrey Lok-Fay Cheung
February 26 – March 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 1, 2–5pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, March 15, 1–2pm
Unfamiliar Portraits examines the complex relationship between queer identity and familial legacy through conceptual photography, wax sculptures, and textiles. Engaging with materials that speak to both domesticity and ritualistic transformation, the works explore the ambiguity of familial structures and ancestral reverence. The exhibition functions as a site of transformation, an alt-historical archive which seeks to amplify voices that have been silenced or omitted from generational storytelling.
Through various media, including the artist's own physical presence, the work creates space for untold narratives that didn't conform to heteronormative expectations. Uncertainty and speculation give way to fiction and assertion, as everyday materials become markers of presence and absence. This multimedia installation continues an ongoing investigation of intergenerational memory and identity through a queer Asian-Canadian lens, inviting viewers to contemplate their own relationship with inherited histories and cultural identity.
Artist Talk
Join us for a conversation with the artist on Saturday, March 15th from 1-2pm, moderated by Kristofer Sakamoto-Marshall of The New Other. In this talk, Cheung will discuss his exhibition "Unfamiliar Portraits," exploring themes of identity, familial legacy, and cultural inheritance. The artist will share insights into his creative process, the vulnerability of placing himself in front of the camera, and his explorations of ceremony and ritual. The conversation will explore how memory and imagination can create more resilient and compassionate connections across generations, fostering better intergenerational understanding.
The artist will also be present in the gallery during regular hours on March 15th.
