From the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new reality emerged for people of Ukrainian heritage such as Denise Hawrysio. Notions of sovereignty, democracy, and social responsibility suddenly took on a heightened sense of urgency. Since the war began, Denise has been searching for ways to respond to the atrocities unfolding in Ukraine — an immensely difficult task in the face of genocide. The body of work from which this exhibition is created includes collages, artist books, postcards, works on paper, and embroidery. Denise also included a work by Ukrainian artist Stanislav Turina. To mark the 4th anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, the largest display case will be draped with a Ukrainian flag.

This exhibition marks the third anniversary of the ongoing assault of Ukraine, showcasing works by Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian artists, including Denise Hawrysio, Taras Polataiko, Svetlana Struk, and Saint Javelin. At its heart are the haunting doors damaged by Russian shrapnel, first seen in the exhibition Doors: Through the Horror of War in 2023 and recently added to the Ukrainian Museum of Canada’s permanent collection. The exhibition also honours the Canadians who have sacrificed their lives to help Ukrainians defend their homeland and global democracy.

The War That Changes Everything is a testament to the resilience of the Ukrainian spirit and Canadian support for Ukrainian people in a war whose outcome changes everything.

Someone Prays for You is a fundraising initiative started by Taras Polataiko, a Ukrainian-Canadian artist from Chernivtsi, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Proceeds go directly to support civilian defenders on the front lines. The name of the fundraiser is taken from a poem entitled The Mother by Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk, about a mother praying for her son who is fighting in Eastern Ukraine.

Donating artists: Angela Andorrer, Michael Allgoewer, David Blatherwick, Janet Cardiff, Denise Hawrysio, Violetta Oliinyk, Jarema Polataiko, Taras Polataiko, and Stanislav Turina.

Please help support citizen defenders in Ukraine by purchasing artwork from Someone Prays for You. Funds collected will go towards medical supplies, body armour, night vision optics, reconnaissance drones, and other critical equipment.

From the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new reality occurred for people of Ukrainian heritage such as Denise Hawrysio. Notions of sovereignty, democracy, and social responsibility suddenly took on a greater sense of urgency. As theorist Vincent Lloyd writes, “The inertia of the ordinary sweeps us along, muting all but the most mundane worries. But in moments of tragedy, of deep decision, of disruption, of evil, in moments when we step out of the pull of the ordinary, we understand that something is amiss in the world.”

These 24 collages juxtapose images excised from old National Geographic magazines and WWII war journals with contemporary imagery from Ukraine.

This exhibition is a fundraiser for Ukraine. All proceeds from the sale of the collages will go to medical aid for wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

Strange Gaze continues the worldwide celebrations marking 100 years of surrealism. The exhibition, curated by the artist Rebecca Scott, brings together 16 artists with dreamlike and figurative works that reference and react to the current political and ecological context. Artists include: Emily Allchurch, Hans Bellmer, Dan Coombs, Emma Cousin, Mark Fairnington, Ian Frith Powell, Martin Greenland, Dereck Harris, Denise Hawrysio, Mike Healey, James Mackie, Bex Massey, Pascal Rousson, Rebecca Scott, Perdita Sinclair and Suzy Willey.

The AGO has purchased Stillborn, an artist’s book by Denise Hawrysio, for its permanent collection.

We Lived Happily During the War brings together a group of artists to explore themes of war, notions of dislocated landscape, and supernatural fictional narratives. Curated by Denise Hawrysio, the exhibition features work by Michael Allgoewer, Jordan Baseman, Denise Hawrysio, Marc Hulson, Rebecca Scott, and Stanislav Turina.

The exhibition title is borrowed from Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky, whose poem We Lived Happily During The War voices the guilt and cognitive dissonance felt by the speaker while a distant war is raging.

and quiet that splinters the winter holds menace and beauty in a kind of cognitive dissonance. It is both a gesture of remembrance for those who have died in the war in Ukraine and a lament for the destruction of the natural environment. The title is from a poem by Anastasia Afanasieva, one of many contemporary Ukrainian writers exploring how — and if — poetry can respond to the Russian invasion of their country. Hawrysio and Wynne worked together in the At Home gallery throughout September, experimenting with materials and media to ask the same question of art.

Tate Britain has acquired works from Denise Hawrysio’s Spotlight series: the large hardcover Spotlight Actresses and its hand-made box, and Volumes 1–12 of the magazine-style Leading Actresses A–L.

Born in Toronto and now based in London, conceptual artist Denise Hawrysio works in a variety of media. The photographs on view derive from her series A Catalogue of Errors, created during a residency at the Banff Centre in 1997. The images were printed from 35mm negatives inherited from the artist’s then-recently deceased father, Henry Hawrysio, an avid hobby photographer. Sorting through the negatives, she elected to make enlarged prints of those featuring a variety of technical mistakes, such as a finger over the lens or overexposure due to shutter malfunction. The resulting representations of partially-obscured family members and friends in intimate settings pose questions about photography’s role in communicating familial relationships and eliciting nostalgia.

Hawrysio exhibited works from A Catalogue of Errors at artist-run centre Mercer Union in Toronto in 1999, and at the former Floating Gallery in Winnipeg in 2001.

Gaps in the Persistent Hiss is a journey through a landscape both sonically and visually. Through the combination of experimental music and a handheld binocular lens, the video plays with a radically discontinuous, almost hallucinogenic image which reveals a primordial awareness of the world around us. At times through this binocular lens, the image acts as a sort of mirror expanding the territory of the visible beyond what the individual can directly experience, by reflecting what is behind the lens, then suddenly acts as a sort of hole sucking up the entire visual world into itself. With sound by Malvern Brume.

Experiments in Cinema, recently featured in the Millennium Film Journal and Senses of Cinema, was voted one of the top 10 experimental film festivals in the world.

Relaxation and Nothingness, a film by Denise Hawrysio with sound by John Wynne, was projected after sundown on the front windows of MOCA London. This work was developed from a live Zoom intervention made during the first London lockdown.

Relaxation and Nothingness is closer to painting than to traditional narrative. It exploits the specificities of time and technology, almost making itself, in the tradition of structural filmmaking. At the same time, it draws on the sensory, psychological, and social dimensions of the virtual world. Like much of Hawrysio’s work, the intention is to abstract from the visible world in order to transform the viewer’s perceptions of “normal” reality.

Artist Denise Hawrysio responds to the Women’s Art Library collection by selecting key works by feminist authors and artists from the early 1980s who have influenced her own practice, reconfiguring and reimagining them in a new installation made for Special Collections and Archives in the Library.

The opening included a screening of work by Karen Finley and Monica Ross, and a new video by Hawrysio with a live performance by Petri Huurinainen.

Hawrysio’s re-casting of the 1987 Spotlight directory of actresses evokes the spirit of surrealist collage, embracing André Breton’s definition of Surrealism as a disruptive “juxtaposition of two more or less disparate realities” — or, in this case, two more or less disparate faces. The audio component is a recitation of how the text on each page of the book appears after Denise has meticulously cut out each face with a scalpel. Read by Eleanor Vonn Brown, it brings to mind the sound poetry of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate (1922–32), in which language is broken down into its abstract parts.

Denise Hawrysio examines the fragility of identity through “borderline situations,” positioning her work in the liminal space where meaning is forged through direct experience. By staging the exhibition within the Camberwell College library — a site traditionally dedicated to the categorisation and preservation of truth — Hawrysio creates a sharp dialectic with the theme of identity erasure.

Drawing on Peter Sellers’ 1978 existential admission to Kermit the Frog that his “me” had been “surgically removed,” the exhibition offers a prophetic critique of our contemporary curated existence. In an age of algorithmic feedback and high-resolution personas, Hawrysio probes the precise moment where social performance ends and existential surgery begins.