“Looking the World in the Face” offered an overview of contemporary art in Canada from a specific time frame (1972 to 2022) and of specific communities historically overlooked, exemplifying what is possible when the distinctive cultural diversity of Canada is brought into dialogue. Aesthetically, a beautiful visual rhythm emerges. Pedagogically, precisely because of the curatorial choices, visitors are drawn into the many narratives that the works communicate: stories of diasporas and migrations but also of ancient engagement with the land here. Without being reduced to a settler/Indigenous binary or romanticized into some notion of universality, what comes through are the many ways to consider belonging, or not belonging, to a place and the emotional terrain that accompanies it: the ambivalence, the fraughtness, yet also the love.

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IMAGE: Leah Snyder