The exhibition, Unsilenced, presents the work of five Canadian artists to explore the often silenced or stigmatized topic of mental health. The concept for this exhibition arose during the COVID-19 pandemic when mental health and the effects of long periods of anxiety became top of mind collectively. A spotlight on mental health or wellness in Canada is still timely, given the rising levels of anxiety in children and youth, with 1 in 5 Canadians experiencing a mental health challenge annually, and 1 in 3 affected in their lifetime, impacting daily functioning, work, and social life. Although anxiety may be a shared concern or experience running throughout the exhibition, the artists offer diverse perspectives in their chosen media, speaking to identity, neurodiversity, colonial impacts of intergenerational trauma, and eco or climate anxiety.

Richard Boulet’s textile-based works present as wonderfully layered collages in their interwoven combinations of fibre art approaches. Cloth and textiles are soothing to Boulet – with the connections to clothing, bedding and even dish cloths (as seen in the work, The Ineffable Bond Between Father And Son), fabric can be seen as a signifier for memory and lives lived. Boulet engages with the materiality and aesthetics of fabric as an initial point of departure into his creative process of building his complex compositions through construction and assemblage, a process that gives nods to American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘combine’ paintings and reads of intuition and stream of consciousness. Within these layers, he draws on autobiographical sources - memories, family, spirituality, experiences of trauma and marginalization - to navigate his own neurodiversity in living with mental health challenges and explore his identity and sexuality as a 2SLGBTQIA+ individual in a search of self, meaning and social justice. Hints of these references are found in the ambiguous and poetic and yet arresting embroidered text that is embedded within his textiles. The cross-stitched statement, YOU MUST RED FLAG ANY SIGN OF THAT, in Phantom Horses draws on memories about imaginative play with his brother, representing a loss of innocence and feelings of shame at his non-compliance of socially-accepted gender roles.ⁱ His embrace of craft-based media that have been traditionally associated with women is, in itself, an act of resistance and subversion of prescribed norms. Boulet has considered his works within the context of ex-votos, historical religious paintings that are created as offerings to a saint or the divine, given in fulfillment of a vow or in gratitude. In this light, perhaps Boulet’s works are markers of personal transformation, embracing and offering hope – RAGING HOPEⁱⁱ - to not only cope but to thrive.

Ruth Cuthand’s beautifully beaded images of MRI or PET brain scans capture the imaging of different mental illnesses or diagnoses as they play out in different regions of the brain. Her beaded brain scans illuminate images of anxiety, mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression, presenting them in the public sphere to speak to mental health issues within her own family, as well as First Nations communities. Cuthand explains, “Mental health is a big problem on reserves and there’s a lot of shame with it. Mental health problems run in my family, so I’m really aware of it and want to bring awareness to the fact that mental health is not something to be ashamed of.”ⁱⁱⁱ An evolution of her previous beaded series of diseases, the Trading series, this body of work is a continuation in her practice of addressing the impacts of colonialism on Indigenous people, acknowledging its ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma. Beads, for Cuthand, are “a visual reference to colonization… On the Plains, beads were a valuable trade item, they replaced the method of using porcupine quills… Obviously beads were quicker to use, covered large areas and came in a wide variety of colours.”^iv

Derek Pho invites viewers into his early-diagnosed and now transitioned experience of living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the graphic narratives of his large-scale canvases. Originally created in 1998-2000 to represent his struggle with mental health, Pho revisited and reworked these canvases in 2023-2025 by applying his distinctive “mazing” technique. Somewhat reminiscent of American artist Keith Haring’s graffiti-inspired, continual line drawings and inspired by classical labyrinth designs from antiquity and Surrealist automatic drawing, Pho has designed the mazing as a daily, meditative practice. It has become a means of embracing order and yet interrupting the rigid perfectionism and magical thinking of OCD with its arbitrary rules, such as numbering, to allow for moments of intuition and “happy accidents” to come into play through changes in the direction and patterns of his lines.^v By overwriting the intense visual vocabulary of his paintings with a new layer of labyrinth-like lines, he transforms his early narrative of living with OCD with its habitual thinking and fixations to one of mindfulness and acceptance of his neurodiversity.^vi

Amy Snider’s installation, Crushed, presents an environment for visitors to explore and navigate with thoughtful consideration. Made entirely from Regina clay, pots of extreme fragility litter the gallery floor, while a single line of text, painted in clay slip on the gallery walls, runs along the perimeter of the space. An audio component of birdsong, intermittently interrupted with the sound of planes overhead, positions visitors audibly within the backyard where Snider digs for this clay. The text shares Snider’s personal anxieties about the impact she makes on the natural world as she routinely and innocently goes through her day, and the grief she experiences the for the species and habitat loss we are collectively causing with anthropogenic climate change. Inviting visitors to choose whether they are going to gingerly navigate through and around the ceramic forms or crush them while they engage in reading the surrounding text, Snider brings awareness to the widespread but often unacknowledged anxieties many of us have about our ecological precarity. Snider provides this installation as a safe space for us to reflect on our own fears and sadness about the state of the natural world, and she provides opportunities for us to find community and take action, the antidotes to despair.^vii

Peter Tucker’s engagement with the materiality of wood within his sculptural forms, in his appreciation as evidenced in the care he takes within his masterful, complex joinery, is driven by a personal search for self, place and belonging. Being a bi-racial adoptee of Caribbean-Canadian and European ethnicity, one that experienced familial disconnect, trauma and racism, Tucker has struggled with what it means to create identity and connection within the world when there are no clear parameters. The work, Part Of, as a complex puzzle is a perfect metaphor for the elaborate concept of self we all come to piece together in the building of our personal narratives. Reroot is the result of reclaiming lumber from its processed and imposed geometry and returning it to a more natural state, willing the wood to comply to an organic, curving form. Reminiscent of a tree limb or a sprouting plant, perhaps this elegant form in its construction poses questions about agency and predisposition, nature versus nurture. Out of Tucker’s personal struggle with his past and search for identity and place comes these wonderfully poetic, minimalist works that look to the natural world for grounding. Each artist presents an exploration that engages in concepts surrounding mental health, without offering conclusions, but the act of sharing experience and putting it out into the world for engagement and response creates space for shared dialogue and opportunities to find community.

Jennifer McRorie, Curator


i. From an interview with the artist, January 14, 2026.

ii. A reference to Richard Boulet’s work, I Need Rage So I Rage Hope (2017)

iii. Arin Faye, Brain Scans / Neurotransmitting: Ruth & Theo Cuthand, Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery, https://nelsonmuseum.ca/exhibitions/brain-scans-neurotransmitting/, accessed January 14, 2026.

iv. Ruth Cuthand, Artist Statement, https://www.ruthcuthand.ca/trading-series/, accessed January 31, 2026.

v. Interview with the artist, January 30, 2026.

vi. Sandee Moore, Derek Pho: Labyrinthitus, Art Gallery of Regina, promotional statement accessed on social media on January 14, 2026.

vii. Amy Snider, artist statement, 2024.