At The Power Plant, knowledge-sharing initiatives, consistent internal reflection, and reciprocal community and artist engagement remain at the centre of our practice. We believe that through our actions, cultural institutions and communities have the power to indelibly transform our world. In 2020–21, through your support of The Power Plant, we presented 7 exhibitions; collaborated with 7 participating artists; presented 6 travelling exhibitions; and produced 8 publications.

At The Power Plant, knowledge-sharing initiatives, consistent internal reflection, and reciprocal community and artist engagement remain at the centre of our practice.

Although forced to close early due to the COVID-19 pandemic on 15 March 2020, The Power Plant closed the 2019-20 year with 265,815 visitors through our shows on site and our robust national touring exhibition program. During the 2019-20 year, The Power Plant advanced its public program offerings to include new art programs including Expanding Access programs which welcome and better serve visitors who have been systematically excluded from art galleries and museums because of limited-to-no accessibility options or inclusivity practices while maintaining an outstanding exhibition program featuring work by the best local, national, and international artists. 

Although forced to close early due to the COVID-19 pandemic on 15 March 2020, The Power Plant closed the 2019-20 year with 265,815 visitors through our shows on site and our robust national touring exhibition program.

In 2018-19, The Power Plant presented a record number of 13 exhibitions with an audience of 77,243 visitors and introduced the gallery's new Strategic Plan. The three seasons of exhibitions, accompanying programs and partnerships contiue to represent the gallery's mandate to represent a leading non-collecting, public art gallery dedicated exclusively to contemporary visual art from Canada and the world.

In 2018-19, The Power Plant presented a record number of 13 exhibitions with an audience of 77,243 visitors and introduced the gallery's new Strategic Plan. 

During the 2017-18 year, The Power Plant advanced its public program offerings to include new art programs for young people and events that introduced students to the professional world of art making, all while maintaining an outstanding exhibition program featuring work by the best local, national and international artists.

The end of The Power Plant's 2016-17 fiscal year coincided with the institution's 30th Anniversary and Canada 150, and this landmark year saw many achivements. The three seasons of exhibitions, accompanying programs and partnerships added to the gallery's rich 30 years of history.


The end of The Power Plant's 2016-17 fiscal year coincided with the institution's 30th Anniversary and Canada 150, and this landmark year saw many achivements. 

The Power Plant saw numerous successes over its 2015-16 fiscal year, including the launch of the gallery's Fleck Clerestory Commission Program, record-breaking attendance—a historic 70,341 visitors!—three seasons of cutting-edge exhibitions and a host of outstanding public programs and collaborations.

During the 2014-15 year, The Power Plant enjoyed three successful seasons, presenting an exceptional program of solo and group exhibitions, commissions and special projects which, all told, fulfilled and reaffirmed our mandate of presenting and supporting the works of groundbreaking contemporary Canadian and international artists.

During the 2014-15 year, The Power Plant enjoyed three successful seasons, presenting an exceptional program of solo and group exhibitions, commissions and special projects which

During the 2013-14 year, The Power Plant advanced its public program offerings to include new art programs for young people and events that introduced students to the professional world of art making, all while maintaining an outstanding exhibition program featuring work by the best local, national and international artists.

During the 2013-14 year, The Power Plant advanced its public program offerings to include new art programs for young people and events that introduced students to the professional world of art making

During the 2012-13 year, The Power Plant celebrated its 25th anniversary. This milestone caused us to look back on how The Power Plant has earned its international reputation as Canada’s leading public art gallery devoted to contemporary art, and to look forward to maintaining this leadership position in the years to come.

During the 2012-13 year, The Power Plant celebrated its 25th anniversary.

aa bronson

abbas akhavan

abdelkader benchamma

adam garnet jones

adel abdessemed

adrian paci

akram zaatari

aleesa cohene

aleksandra mir

alicia henry

allison morris

allora & calzadilla

althea thauberger

amalia pica

amanda kung

amartey golding

andrea bowers

angela bulloch

anique jordan

anna boghiguian

ann veronica janssens

aria dean

aude moreau

aylan couchie

beth stuart

bik van der pol

biret pieski

brenda draney

candice breitz

carey young

carlos amorales

cecilia vicuña

charles campbell

christian marclay

couzyn van heuvelen

david maljković

dawit l. petros

derek sullivan

diane borsato

donna kukama

dora garcía

duane linklater

dylan miner

eija-liisa ahtila

ella gonzales

ellen gallagher

elmgreen & dragset

emeka ogboh

emily mast

emmanuel osahor

erdem taşdelen

eve sussman

filip de boeck

fiona banner

flaka haliti

francesco vezzoli

frances stark

francis alÿs

franz erhard walther

franz west

fred tomaselli

gáddjá haarla pieski

goldin+senneby

grada kilomba

hajra waheed

hiwa k

howie tsui

ian wallace

iñigo manglano-ovalle

isabelle pauwels

jen aitken

jimmy robert

joachim koester

joana hadjithomas and khalil joreige

joi t. arcand

jonathas de andrade

jos de gruyter and harald thys

julia dault

julia rose sutherland

julius von bismarck

june clark

kader attia

kapwani kiwanga

karla black

kelly mark

keren cytter

kerry tribe

lap-see lam

latifa echakhch

laurie kang

lawrence weiner

leslie hewitt

lili huston-herterich

manon de boer

manuel mathieu

máret ánne sara

marguerite humeau

maria hupfield

maria loboda

mario pfeifer

Aylan Couchie is a Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. Her works explore the connections between colonial/First Nations histories of place, culture, and Indigenous erasure, in addition to issues of (mis)representation and cultural appropriation. 

Aylan Couchie is a Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. Her works explore the connections between colonial/First Nations histories of place, culture, and Indigenous erasure, in addition to issues of (mis)representation and cultural appropriation. Couchie’s sculptures and videos address various themes, including the acknowledgement and reclamation of Indigenous lands through language as well as the trauma around forgotten histories. She is a NSCAD Univeristy, Halifax, alumna and received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media, and Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto, where she focused her thesis on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. She’s currently in her second year of study at Queen’s University, Kingston, where she’s working on her PhD in Cultural Studies. 

Aylan Couchie, Aki, 2018. Sage, sweetgrass, cedar ashes, wood, acrylic. Courtesy the artist. Installation view: in parallel, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2023. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

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Hiwa K is an Iraqi-Kurdish contemporary artist, born 1975. He currently lives and works in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan. Working with video, performance, and installation, he draws from personal experiences, including family anecdotes, his arts education, and daily encounters and occurrences. Many of his works stress collectivity and participation as part of their development, engaging with and critiquing teaching and learning systems, and exploring how knowledge can be gathered through everyday experience as much as through academic settings.


Hiwa K is an Iraqi-Kurdish contemporary artist, born 1975. He currently lives and works in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan. Working with video, performance, and installation, he draws from personal experiences, including family anecdotes, his arts education, and daily encounters and occurrences. Many of his works stress collectivity and participation as part of their development, engaging with and critiquing teaching and learning systems, and exploring how knowledge can be gathered through everyday experience as much as through academic settings.

Hiwa K has recently exhibited his work at Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2021); Kunsthalle Mannheim (2019); S.M.A.K. Museum, Ghent (2018); New Museum, New York (2018); and KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017). He has participated in group exhibitions including the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); documenta 14, Kassel (2017); Yinchuan Biennale (2018); Asian Art Biennial, Taipei (2019); Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_ Videobrasil, São Paulo (2019); Anren Biennale, Sichuan (2019); and MoMA PS1, New York (2019). The artist was awarded the 2019 Hector Prize and, in 2016, the Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Award.


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The Bell Project

Paulo Nazareth (born in Borun Nak [Vale do Rio Doce], Minas Gerais) lives and works in Palmital (Belo Horizonte) and throughout the world.  In his creative practice Nazareth draws on the complex identity of Brazil, and specifically of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, which are both marked by the legacies of colonialism and slavery, as well as the continuing exploitation of racialized peoples and the appropriation of their lands.

Paulo Nazareth (born in Borun Nak [Vale do Rio Doce], Minas Gerais) lives and works in Palmital (Belo Horizonte) and throughout the world. His most recent institutional solo exhibitions include those at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019); Pampulha Art Museum, Belo Horizonte (2018); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2014); and Museu de arte de São Paulo (2013). Recent group exhibitions include those at the 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021); Kunstverein Hannover (2020); 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); MO Museum, Vilnius (2019); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018); MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2018); Prospect.4 Triennial, New Orleans (2017); Remai Modern, Saskatoon (2017); Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2016); SITE Santa Fe (2016); Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2016); and 56th Venice Biennale (2015).

Paulo Nazareth travels on foot throughout the Americas and the African continent, cultivating relationships with the people he encounters. These journeys, which begin from Palmital in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where he lives and works, are foundational to his artmaking. He draws on the complex identity of Brazil, and specifically of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, which are both marked by the legacies of colonialism and slavery, as well as the continuing exploitation of racialized peoples and the appropriation of their lands.

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Watermelon Ford

Julia Rose Sutherland is an artist and educator of Mi’kmaq (Metepenagiag Nation) and settler descent. Through her artworks, Sutherland navigates trauma and social issues associated with her Indigenous roots.

Julia Rose Sutherland is an artist and educator of Mi’kmaq (Metepenagiag Nation) and settler descent. Through her artworks, Sutherland navigates trauma and social issues associated with her Indigenous roots. In doing so, the artist encourages more meaningful conversations about Indigenous healing practices, feminism, and identity politics, among other topics. Sutherland’s interdisciplinary art practice employs photography, sculpture, textiles, and performance. She earned her MFA at the University at Buffalo (2019) and her BFA in Craft and New Media at the Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary (2013). 

Julia Rose Sutherland, Enma'latl “Take Home”, 2019. Handmade felt and porcupine quill bonnet. Courtesy the artist. Installation view: in parallel, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2023. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

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Enma'latl “Take Home”

Jen Aitken (b.1985) makes sculptures and drawings that combine perceptual ambiguity with structural clarity. Based in Toronto, she received her MFA in 2014 from the University of Guelph, and her BFA in 2010 from Emily Carr University, Vancouver. Aitken received a Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Award in 2021, and the Hnatyshyn Foundation and TD Bank Emerging Visual Artist Award in 2017.

Jen Aitken (b.1985) makes sculptures and drawings that combine perceptual ambiguity with structural clarity. Based in Toronto, she received her MFA in 2014 from the University of Guelph, and her BFA in 2010 from Emily Carr University, Vancouver. Aitken received a Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Award in 2021, and the Hnatyshyn Foundation and TD Bank Emerging Visual Artist Award in 2017. Recent exhibitions include the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg (2022) where the artist also completed a residency; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2021); Arsenal Contemporary Art, Toronto (2021); and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (2020). Her works have been acquired by Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Kamloops Art Gallery; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; and RBC, Toronto.

Jen Aitken, Lunopel, 2016. Concrete and foam. Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Anonymous Gift, 2023. Installation view: The Same Thing Looks Different, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2023. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

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Lunopel

Jen Aitken, Altered Cylinder B (Crouching), 2023. Epoxy resin and fibreglass cloth. Commissioned by The Power Plant, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, and TrépanierBaer, Calgary. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

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Altered Cylinder B (Crouching)

Jen Aitken, Outline 1 (detail), 2023. Plywood and glue. Commissioned by The Power Plant, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, and TrépanierBaer, Calgary. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

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Outline 1 (detail)

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Nitsiit

Sonya Kelliher-Combs is an Iñupiaq and Athabascan multidisciplinary artist based out of Anchorage, Alaska. Kelliher-Combs born in 1969 in Bethel, Alaska and was raised in the Northwest Alaska community of Nome. Through her mixed media painting and sculpture, Kelliher-Combs offers a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context. 

Sonya Kelliher-Combs is an Iñupiaq and Athabascan multidisciplinary artist based out of Anchorage, Alaska.
Kelliher-Combs born in 1969 in Bethel, Alaska and was raised in the Northwest Alaska community of Nome. Her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree is from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Master of Fine Arts is from Arizona State University. Through her mixed media painting and sculpture, Kelliher-Combs offers a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context. Her combination of shared iconography with intensely personal imagery demonstrates the generative power that each vocabulary has over the other. Similarly, her use of synthetic, organic, traditional and modern materials moves beyond oppositions between Western/Native culture, self/other and man/nature, to examine their interrelationships and interdependence while also questioning accepted notions of beauty. Kelliher-Combs' process dialogues the relationship of her work to skin, the surface by which an individual is mediated in culture.

Kelliher-Combs' work has been shown in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Alaska, the United States and internationally, including the national exhibition Changing Hands 2: Art without Reservation and SITELINES: Much Wider Than a Line. She is a recipient of the prestigious United States Arts Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Fellowship, Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, Rasmuson Fellowship and is a recipient of the 2005 Anchorage Mayors Arts Award and 2010 Alaska Governor's Individual Artist Award. Her work is included in the collections of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Anchorage Museum, Alaska State Museum, University of Alaska Museum of the North, Eiteljorg Museum, and The National Museum of the American Indian. Kelliher-Combs currently lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska. As an Alaska Native artist and advocate, she has served on the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Board, Alaska State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Advisory, and the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Arts Board.

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Idiot Strings - Credible

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0° Blind Spot, Where Beloved is…

Couzyn van Heuvelen is an Inuk sculptor and installation artist originally from Iqaluit, NU. Based in southern Ontario, van Heuvelen's artistic practice focuses on fusing Inuit art history and traditions with contemporary materials and technologies. Van Heuvelen's use of unconventional materials and fabrication processes, combined with elements of Inuit culture, mirrors his own process of exploring how traditional practices continue to influence his everyday life.

Couzyn van Heuvelen is an Inuk sculptor and installation artist originally from Iqaluit, NU. Based in southern Ontario, van Heuvelen's artistic practice focuses on fusing Inuit art history and traditions with contemporary materials and technologies. Van Heuvelen's use of unconventional materials and fabrication processes, combined with elements of Inuit culture, mirrors his own process of exploring how traditional practices continue to influence his everyday life.

Van Heuvelen's series Fishing Lures (2015) features a variety of materials, from silver and brass to muskox horn and baleen, manipulated through various contemporary techniques. Laser-cut into the surface of Baleen Lure (2015) is a gold-tinted triangular pattern drawn from 3D scans of existing fishing lures transferred into a two-dimensional image. "The image etched into the surface resembles scrimshaw techniques," explains the artist, "as well as ancient examples of Inuit carvings that featured repeating geometric patterns."

Alongside these more intimate works, van Heuvelen has created a number of public art installations such as aluminum qamutiik at the Southway Inn in Ottawa, ON, as part of the Lost Stories Project in September 2017. The sculpture commemorates the significance of the site as a waypoint for Inuit travelling from the Arctic for school, work and medical services. Additional public works include the permanent installation Nitsiit (2017) at Sheridan College's Hazel McCallion Campus in Mississauga, ON, and Nets (2018), exhibited in Fort Qu'Appelle, SK, as part of the project Roadside Attractions.

In 2011, van Heuvelen received his BFA from York University in Toronto, ON, and his MFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, NS, in 2015. His work has been included in several group exhibitions across Canada, such as Insurgence/Resurgence (2018) at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Manitoba and the touring exhibition  ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ  Among All These Tundras (2018–19), among others. Van Heuvelen is currently represented by Fazakas Gallery in Vancouver, BC. 

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Avataq

Máret Ánne Sara (b.1983) is an artist and author. She is from a reindeer herding family in Kautokeino and currently works in her hometown. Máret Ánne is the initiator of Dáiddadállu Artist Collective. She has published two novels and was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Children’s and Young Literature Prize in 2014 for her debut book “Ilmmid gaskkas” (published in Norwegian in 2014 and in English in 2016).

Máret Ánne Sara (b.1983) is an artist and author. She is from a reindeer herding family in Kautokeino and currently works in her hometown. Máret Ánne is the initiator of Dáiddadállu Artist Collective. She has published two novels and was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Children’s and Young Literature Prize in 2014 for her debut book “Ilmmid gaskkas” (published in Norwegian in 2014 and in English in 2016). The follow-up “Doaresbealde doali” was published in 2014. Sara is currently working on the contemporary art project Pile o’Sápmi, which was presented at Documenta 14 in Kassel in 2017.

Máret Ánne has exhibited visual art since 2003 and often deals with political and social issues, from a Sami and reindeer-social perspective. Sara has designed posters, CD / LP covers, scene visuals and fabric prints for a number of Sami artists, designers and institutions. She is said to have a distinctive style and a recognizable visual expression.

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Gákte-Quipo

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The Power Plant is currently open with exhibitions Emmanuel Osahor: _To dream of other places_ and Shelagh Keeley: _Film Notebooks 1985-2017_.

Emmanuel Osahor: To dream of other places

Emmanuel Osahor, To dream of other places, 2025.

To dream of other places

Shelagh Keeley: Film Notebooks 1985-2017

Shelagh Keeley, Jardim do Ultramar / The Colonial Garden, Lisbon, Portugal, 2016. Digital format video. 180 minutes, colour, sound. 

Film Notebooks 1985-2017

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37 years of archives

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Welcome to The Power Plant Archive. Here you can explore our past exhibitions, see a variety of artworks we presented, learn more about the artists and so much more!