Ali Shariq Jamali and Jess MacCormack
New Works at the Audain Gallery
October 16 鈥� November 1, 2025
Audain Gallery
SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Opening: Wednesday, October 15 | 6:00 PM 鈥� 8:00 PM
Presented as two sections, Wjood-E-Irtika: What Remains After Erasure and Reconect 2 Resist, this dual exhibition brings together SCA PhD students Ali Shariq and Jess MacCormack, respectively, whose practices engage with geographies, communities, and histories erased by colonization and global capitalism. Through contrasting approaches, Shariq and MacCormack create a space for dialogue between memory and loss, visibility and erasure, the ancient and the contemporary.
Jess MacCormack鈥檚 work, rooted in the Downtown Eastside (DTES), responds to the lived aftermath of colonialism and systemic neglect. Using fragile and found materials, socially engaged photo-based projects, sculptural elements, flowers, and take-away items such as stickers and a zine, their practice foregrounds personal history and collective trauma while confronting social stigma and class struggle.
Ali Shariq, a recent immigrant to Vancouver, turns to his ancestral roots in Pakistan and the heritage site of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley Civilization. His work spans photography, sculptural forms with live camera installation, AI-generated models, and video installation. His work offers a meditation on cultural erosion, globalization, migration, and the poetics of loss.
Together, their practices converge on questions of memory and erasure. The exhibition does not seek resolution but instead invites viewers into a shared space of vulnerability and reflection, where remembering becomes an act of care and resistance.
91泡芙 the Artists
Ali Shariq explores how collective memory is disrupted through globalization, migration, and digital abstraction, blending digital and material practices to examine remembering and forgetting.
Jess MacCormack creates political, site-specific work grounded in the DTES, addressing complex traumas, class struggle, and systemic neglect through collaborative and socially engaged art forms.