La Rentrée Concordia 2026: Two galleries, three exhibitions, one night to celebrate
A new season of exhibitions is taking shape across Concordia’s galleries.
This fall, the FOFA Gallery opens two exhibitions exploring displacement, memory, land and technology, while joining the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery for La Rentrée Concordia 2026 on September 10, an evening celebrating the launch of the fall programs of both galleries.
Opening September 8 and running through November 20, two FOFA exhibitions will bring together artists whose practices invite audiences to reconsider how we understand place, history, technology and our relationship to the world around us.
On September 10, visitors can experience the exhibitions at both FOFA and the Bina Ellen galleries, meet the artists and take part in the evening’s programming as Concordia’s arts community comes together to mark the start of the fall season.
Photograph From the Personal Archive of Saule Bultrikova, by Kandis Friesen, 2023.
Stories of exile
At FOFA, artist Kandis Friesen will present Where you have not first of all to uproot a whole forest, an exhibition of new works in wood carving, photography and video examining histories of exile, incarceration and displacement in the region of the former Karlag gulag in Karaganda, central Kazakhstan.
Karlag was one of the Soviet Union’s largest forced-labour camp systems, occupying an enormous territory in central Kazakhstan from 1931 to 1959. Following its closure, many former guards and incarcerated residents remained in the region, building new lives within and around the architecture, landscapes and social relationships shaped by the former prison camp.
Friesen’s ongoing work considers how these histories continue to surface in the region today, through artistic, architectural and social histories and traces.
One of the works will take the form of a banner installed in the courtyard with support from Concordia Public Art. Additional works will be presented in the York Vitrines.
엘리 허경란 / Ellie Kyungran Heo, ご飯、たべましたか? / Did You Eat Rice?, 2017. HD video (still). | Courtesy of the artist and Lux Distribution
Land, body and technology
In the FOFA Gallery’s Main Space and Black Box, The Earth We Carry a group exhibition curated by Hanss Lujan Torres brings together six Indigenous artists whose practices move between land, body and technology.
“A lot of ecological thinking still positions nature as separate from (even opposed to) technology,” says Gwynne Fulton, the FOFA Gallery Director. “This exhibition starts from the premise that land and technology are not separate spheres but entangled strata of the same terrain. Working through Lakȟóta-grounded AI, machinima, hide tanning, and song, the artists draw on Indigenous lifeways that have never organized experience around this division.”
Through diverse artistic practices, The Earth We Carry will ask audiences to reconsider the boundaries between the natural and technological worlds, and our own place within them.
“These two exhibitions look quite different on the surface — one rooted in Soviet history and carceral geographies, the other in Indigenous futurisms and sovereignties. Yet both are invested in forms of knowledge and memory that don’t travel easily through official channels. Friesen’s work attends to unofficial archives and oral histories; Lujan Torres” exhibition centers ways of knowing grounded in land and relation,” adds Fulton.
A shared fall opening across Concordia’s galleries
As part of La Rentrée Concordia 2026, the Ellen Gallery will celebrate the opening of FOODWAYS, a group exhibition curated by Zoë Chan, on September 10. Bringing together 12 artists, the exhibition explores food and food cultures through questions of cultural identity, personal narratives, community and the transmission of knowledge. The exhibition spans photography, print, video, sculpture, installation and performance and runs from September 1 to December 5, 2026.
The September 10 La Rentrée evening will begin with a guided tour with curator Chan and participating artists at 4:30 p.m., followed by a reception. Visitors are encouraged to visit both galleries during the evening.
FOFA Gallery exhibitions: September 8–November 20, 2026
Opening / La rentrée Concordia: September 10, 4:30–7 p.m.
Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery – FOODWAYS: September 1–December 5, 2026
For more details, visit the Galleries websites: FOFA Gallery & the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery.