Together in Quiet Light features the multidisciplinary work of Holly Chang, Isabelle Parson, Chiedza Pasipanodya, and Alexandre Pépin. Responding to the subtle interconnections of the natural world, these works move beyond surface representation in search of new pathways for knowing oneself and others.

In her ongoing project documenting abandoned greenhouses, Quebec-based artist Isabelle Parson guides her camera lens through light-filled environments that appear suspended in time. Here, plants and tiny creatures are transfixed somewhere between inert and alive, while cloudy sheets of plastic obscure our view and add to the eerie sense of stillness. In this space, calm and protective though imbued with a sense of death and dirt, the artist is afforded moments of introspection to ruminate on life experiences and the fragility of existence.

Toronto/Tkaronto-based artist Holly Chang also turns to the camera to document her entanglements with nature, as a response to grief. Chang worked over the span of two months in two locations: Quirpon Island, Newfoundland and Banff, Alberta in 2022. The locations of this project—reaching eastward and westward—perform an allegory for her Chinese-Jamaican upbringing, impacted in recent years by personal loss and strained family relationships. The artist embeds photographs of her nature hikes into ceramic vessels that double as shadow boxes, revealing what might otherwise be hidden from plain sight. In making her private pain visible and accessing nature to imagine alternate ways of living, Chang takes steps to forge a new identity based on her own terms.

Like Chang, Chiedza Pasipanodya also works with ceramics to connect to a place and its people. Mauuyu is an ongoing series of raku-fired hybrid Baobab fruit sculptures. The baobab tree, found in her home country of Zimbabwe, is monumental in size (spanning up to forty feet in width) and can live for over 2,000 years. The fruits of this tree can be preserved for years and are rich in antioxidants, nutrients, and other medicinal properties. In Mauuyu, Pasipanodya reflects on how a sculpture can perform like a print or photograph, capturing indexical traces. These clay fruits are sculpted by memory and raku-fired with organic materials including rose petals, buchu tea, plantain chips, and sawdust, which leave indelible marks on the ceramic surface. Suspended in a state of offering, the juxtaposition of organic clay with an industrial metal vessel creates an affective resonance, mirroring the fragility and endurance embedded in these talismans. Like the baobab fruit—both a source of nourishment and a symbol of endurance—Mauuyu gestures toward the possibility of having one’s needs met, even across great distances.

The need for human connection and intimacy is foregrounded in the work of Austin-based French-Canadian artist Alexandre Pépin. In the painting Together in Quiet Light (2025), two figures emerge through a dense background brimming with natural elements and celestial bodies. Immersed in a symphony of rich symbolism that the artist has borrowed from his ongoing research in mysticism, queer modernism, and Byzantine painting, the figures seem to exist beyond time. Wrapped in their loving embrace, they communicate a profound sense of interconnection: with nature, with one another, with the divine.

Presented by Zalucky Contemporary in partnership with CONTACT

• Alexandre Pépin is a French-Canadian artist born in Tio'tia:ke (Montréal) and currently based in Austin, TX. His work explores ideas of impermanence, emptiness and non-attachment to celebrate an immediate and fundamental joy of painting. His paintings invite the viewer on a nonlinear journey across physical and psychological landscapes. Notable solo and group exhibitions include Horizons at Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal (2025), A Soft Tension at Chili Art Projects, London (2024), Belongings at North Loop Gallery, Williamstown (2024), The Lover’s Walk at Arsenal, New York (2022) and Painted Hooves at the Visual Arts Center in Austin (2022). He is the recipient of several awards and scholarships including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and his work has been reviewed in Esse Arts + Opinions (2021), New American Painting (2022), Glasstire (2022), and Sightlines Magazine (2022). Pépin received a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the University of Texas, and is currently Assistant Professor of Practice at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. The artist has upcoming exhibitions scheduled for London (UK), Austin, New York and LA (USA).

• Chiedza Pasipanodya is a multidisciplinary artist, award-winning curator, educator, and writer whose research-based practice is concerned with the fluidity of time, memory, and retrieval. Drawing from African diasporic aesthetics and metaphysical inquiry, they create sculptures and installations, inviting audiences to reconsider the meanings of objects, materials and sites through shifting perspectives. Notable exhibitions and installations include Dura | a mechanism for recalling sensibilities of community care at Fort York for BAND Gallery, Toronto (2024), Ndafunga Danda (Thoughts of Home) at the Art Gallery of Burlington (2023), Control at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Bucharest (2024) and Genealogies of Sustenance at The Gardiner Museum (2024). They have also participated in artist residencies at the Watershed Centre for Ceramic Arts (USA), Dzimbanhete Arts and Cultural Interactions (Zimbabwe), and the Global Experience Project: Maria Thereza Alves (Italy). Pasipanodya received their Bachelor of Fine Arts in Criticism and Curatorial Practices from OCAD University (2019) and is an MFA candidate in the Sculpture department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Class of 2025.

• Holly Chang is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Chang makes use of a variety of artistic mediums including textiles, photography, ceramics, and natural dyeing. Her practice is rooted in intersectionality where she often explores her mixed-race —Jamaican-Chinese and white Canadian—and queer identity. Her overall artistic work explores the themes of her second-generation identity. Recent projects include a billboard installation for the 2024 CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto, Mending the Craft at Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto (2023) How to Build a Memory Palace at Gallery 44, Toronto (2022), At a Distance – From Within at Projet Casa, Montreal (2022) and a bar installation at the Plumb, Toronto (2021). She has participated in numerous residencies including the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity Residency (2022) and was the recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Curation in 2023.

• Isabelle Parson is a visual artist who lives and works in Pointe-Fortune, Québec. In her studio – set up in a small greenhouse in her hometown – Parson intuitively observes and explores the phenomena that occur, highlighting the relationship between matter, light, and the living. Notable solo and group exhibitions include De l’apparaître, Belgo, Galerie POPOP, Montréal (2024), Transparution, CACVS, Vaudreuil-Dorion (2023), L'érosion de la scène, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal (2022), and Créer des ponts, Art Souterrain, MBAM (2021). Parson has received several awards and distinctions including The Mildred Lande and Margot Lande Graduate Scholarship in Photography (2022). Her work is included in the collections of CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest, MRC de Vaudreuil-Soulanges, and numerous private collections. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Photography at Concordia University.