Koffler Arts

Koffler Arts is a multi-disciplinary platform for contemporary visual art, performance, and literary events, that situates the contemporary Jewish experience within broader social, historical, and cultural conversations on identity, memory, and place. Through feature exhibitions, live performances, publications, public programs, and educational initiatives, Koffler Arts supports the creation and promotion of new and existing works by Canadian and international artists.

EVENTS | Thursday, June 19, 6 & 6:30 pm

Exhibition Walkthrough: Elinor Carucci | Hannah Altman
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 6 – 6:25 pm
Koffler Gallery (1st floor)

Head of Artistic Engagement at Koffler Arts, Josh Heuman, leads a brief exhibition walkthrough of Elinor Carucci | Hannah Altman. He will address exhibition format, prominent themes of both artists, and points of convergence between the two artists.

At Koffler Arts, Heuman is focused on developing a wide array of public programs for audiences of all ages. He has held previous positions in education, exhibitions, and administration at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, (Toronto); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas); Salt Lake Art Center (Utah); Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University (Logan, Utah); and Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, Nebraska). Heuman has lectured and sat on panels at numerous galleries/museums and postsecondary institutions. He earned a BA in Visual Art and MA in Art History at York University.

Curator’s Walkthrough: David Liss on WONDER: Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart
Thursday, June 19, 2025, 6:30 pm
Koffler301 (3rd floor)

Guest Curator at Koffler Arts, David Liss, leads a brief exhibition walkthrough of Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart’s installation of photography, video and additional visual material. He will speak about working collaboratively with the artist, her creative process, and the resulting images and meanings.

Liss is an independent curator, writer and artist currently living in Toronto. From 2000 to 2020 he was Director, Curator and Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. From 1995 to 2000 he was Director and Curator of the Gallery of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in Montreal. During the early 1990s he contributed art and music reviews to the Montreal Gazette, Vice, Canadian Art, and other publications. Since the late 1980s he has organized, curated, written texts and essays, published books and developed interdisciplinary programs for numerous exhibitions and projects in Toronto, Montreal, and venues across Canada and internationally.

Elinor Carucci | Hannah Altman

May 29 – August 17

Curated by Barbara Astman

Koffler Arts is excited to welcome photographers Elinor Carucci and Hannah Altman to our gallery for an exhibition (May 29 – August 17), curated by Toronto-based artist Barbara Astman. The exhibition highlights the unique dynamic that exists between each artist’s practice and their different life stages, exploring life from a Jewish feminist perspective, including womanhood, rituals, family, and the human condition.

Carucci’s works at Koffler Arts are a selection from Midlife (2011-2019), a photographic series and corresponding book (The Monacelli Press, 2019) never previously exhibited in its present format. This body of work explores the middle stage of life from a highly personal, female perspective. It delves into themes of the body, health, relationships and, overall, brings attention to the challenges of this period in a woman’s life. “In this series, I aim to address the global aspects of middle age, drawing from the deepest and most intimate places in me, a middle-aged woman myself,” says Carucci.

Altman’s work explores themes of ritual and lineage, memory and storytelling, incorporating aspects of Jewish culture. The works at Koffler Arts are from her most recent series, We Will Return To You, with a corresponding book (Saint Lucy Books, 2025). As Altman describes, “From mouth to ear to pen to performance, Jewish myths evolve across the diaspora, braiding themselves into past and future.”

WONDER: Sage Szkabarnicki

May 29 – August 17

Curated by David Liss Koffler 301 (third floor)

Koffler Arts is thrilled to welcome Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart as the inaugural artist in our new gallery space, Koffler301, for a solo exhibition (May 29 – July 13), curated by David Liss. The exhibition, WONDER, highlights Szkabarnicki-Stuart’s practice of intersecting early cinema, vaudeville and slapstick comedy, advertising, social media, performance, and contemporary art.

WONDER features a selection of photographs and videos produced over the last eight years. In addition, Szkabarnicki-Stuart extends her practice by transforming Koffler Arts’ new gallery and performance space, a former classroom and office space on the third floor at Youngplace, into a site-responsive architectural environment of visual play and theatricality. Appropriating vocabularies of advertising and commercial photography, she includes homemade billboards, glossy photographs printed on vinyl applied directly onto the walls, and a series of photographs of kid goats taken during a photo shoot in the space itself.

I began experimenting with photography, video, and self portraiture in 2017. The decision to focus on self-portraiture arose out of practical necessity. Certain works, such as I Brought You Flowers proved dangerous to attempt and time-intensive, which made it difficult to find someone else to be the model. I developed techniques for doing photoshoots by myself using a remote.

My work makes reference to the contemporary advertising imagery found in bus stations and billboards, drawing inspiration from its vibrant colors and compositions. My practice, focused on self-portraiture, draws upon the work of Cindy Sherman by appropriating contemporary
commercial aesthetics and styles, typically created by large teams of professionals working for
prominent brands, to focus on fleeting emotions and mundane objects.
Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart