The heart can’t wait seeks to give content and form to matters of the heart: love, desire, and loss. Drawn from a short story by American playwright Tennessee Williams, the exhibition’s title alludes to the heart’s urgent and relentless impulse for life. As a vital organ, it pumps and circulates blood, providing oxygen and nutrients to the body. Psychologically, the heart links mind and body, intellect and emotion. Culturally, it has been a prevalent philosophical, political, and spiritual symbol since the time of the ancient Greeks.

Considering the gallery space as a metaphor for the heart’s interconnected chambers, Beckly’s new body of work frames the heart as a site and symbol for personal and collective transformation. Photographic installations weave together images, sculptures, chains, and ropes. Suspending in the gallery space, Beckly’s works heighten the tension between attraction and friction, force and vulnerability. Cultivating poetic readings of the heart’s complex structure, channels and connections, Beckly’s project points to the heart as an interwoven form shaped by feeling, imagination, and exchange. Reflecting hope and optimism, The heart can’t wait addresses the heart’s capacity to move through loss and trauma while holding love and intimacy as conditions for possibility.

• Steven Beckly (he/they) is a Chinese-Canadian photographic artist residing in Tkaronto/Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions include: Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto; Stride Gallery, Calgary; and Centre3, Hamilton. Beckly’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto, Scarborough; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Beckly is represented by Daniel Faria Gallery.