Lunatics & Invalids: 2025 programme

Lunatics & Invalids: Oakville Galleries in 2025
Our 2025 programme speaks to endings and beginnings, despair and hope, and  the emergence of alternative visions. In our world mired with moral uncertainty and democratic backsliding, art has an even deeper significance. Contemporary art, being produced alongside geopolitical shifts and the swagger of global capitalism merging inelegantly with political structures, is profoundly implicated. Today, the number of countries autocratizing competes with those democratizing. Representatives of leading nations turn their backs on democracy, equality, human rights and humanitarianism in favour of dominant powers, wealth and tribalism. Recent elections and the resulting robust, ideologically-swayed political mandates are telling, as are the dire consequences for those—often voiceless—in the periphery. While obscene wealth accumulates, social media platforms emit an increasingly hegemonic broadcast.

“The purpose of tyranny,” writes the Chinese poet Liao Yiwu, who was long incarcerated and censured, “is to turn us into a group of angry lunatics—a group of invalids dominated by our emotions.”  Yiwu’s words have inspired our programme. The world presented to us, which engages and provokes us, simultaneously swallows us up. And yet artists continue to produce their work, also facing troubling realities and unrealities. Their artwork may indeed puncture collective perceptions and produce diverging visions from dominant narratives, suggesting alternative collective futures out of an ethical morass.

Karen Kraven: Bloemenlust
Gairloch Gallery February 22–May 10, 2025

Notions of trauma, loss, personal histories, identity and labour all collide in the sculptures of Karen Kraven. Her work explores the vulnerability of the body through exertion, work and grief. Accessing her familial background in textiles, her work emerges from a collection of objects, associations and poetic meanderings. Her work also explores neurological impairment caused by trauma, dementia or stroke. Kraven’s sculptures move us through a politics of pleasure and pain, strewn with illness, grief, and delusions of redemptive productivity.

Kristan Horton: None of This Is in My Mind
Centennial Gallery, February 22–May 10, 2025

Rendered in black ink on craft paper, Kristan Horton’s endless drawing project speaks to primal and ritualistic aspects of creation. The work is a meditative reflection on labour, materiality, and the negotiation between human agency and external forces. As Frederick Kiesler explored “endless architecture” as the antithesis of modern architecture’s dominance, Horton’s endless drawing suggests alternative thinking to our spectacle-laden world. The exhibition is also an invitation to witness an ongoing, open-ended process that resists closure. 

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov: Between Heaven and Earth 
Centennial Gallery, Gairloch Gallery & Gairloch Gardens May 31–September 20, 2025

Exhibition opening:  Saturday, May 31, 2025

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov will present two exhibitions in our galleries and two public sculptures in Gairloch Gardens, including the renowned Ship of Tolerance. Involving over 1,000 children in the creation of its sails, the project fosters a spirit of hope and collective reflection. Opening events will feature concerts and performances, including those by children. Rooted in the Kabakovs’ Soviet-era experiences, their work resonates universally, addressing our ideological and socio-political present while prompting us to consider our collective future. The Ship of Tolerance invites us all to envision a better world.

Produced with support from the National Gallery of Canada, this is our most ambitious project to date.

Other programming
Founded by Séamus Kealy in 2017 in Austria, Sunset Kino remains Canada’s only outdoor avant-garde cinema, set lakeside alongside The Ship of Tolerance. Our international artist residency expands with a new programme sponsored by the SAGA Foundation. Autumn exhibitions feature Hugo Canoilas and Andreia Santana.

About Oakville Galleries
Oakville Galleries is a contemporary art museum showcasing international and Canadian artists. Housed in a lakeside mansion and park, as well as a downtown gallery, it is one of Canada’s leading contemporary art institutions. Executive Director: Séamus Kealy.

Supported by The Town of Oakville, Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, sponsors, patrons, and members.