LEGACY
SPAO is pleased to present Legacy, an exhibition featuring the photo-based work of Michelle Leone Huisman, Don Kwan, Rachel Portesi, and Kathryn Shaw.
Through varied approaches to image-making, each artist in this exhibition examines how legacy and memory are constructed, preserved, and reimagined. Engaging with the history of photography, legacies of exclusion, and the tradition of the memento mori, the works in Legacy look both backward and forward, reflecting on how contemporary artists engage with the weight of history to shape new ways of seeing, remembering, and belonging.
Curated by:
Katie Lydiatt
Exhibition On View:
Saturday, November 8 - Saturday, December 14, 2025
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday, 12PM - 5PM
Reception:
Friday, November 21, 5PM - 11PM
INSTALLATION VIEWS
COMING SOON
SELECTED ARTWORK
THE ARTISTS
Michelle Leone Huisman
Michelle Leone Huisman is a Canadian photo-based artist whose practice merges traditional photographic processes with contemporary explorations of memory, identity, and environmental awareness. Based in British Columbia, she graduated with Honours from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Photo Arts program and studied at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Working with gum bichromate over palladium, Huisman creates tactile, experimental works that consider human connection and material culture.
Aaron Jones
Don Kwan is a third-generation Chinese Canadian, who turns to his own experiences and challenges of being a gay, East Asian artist as a way to ground in broader conversations about identity, representations, and intergenerational memory-making in the diaspora.
Headshot by William Luk
Linh VH Nguyen
Rachel Portesi’s work examines the nuanced transitions in female identity related to motherhood, aging, and choice as well as the intersection of identity and femininity with the physical world. She has exhibited internationally at various venues including The Wadsworth Atheneum, The Griffin Museum, and the Brattleboro Museum to name a few. Portesi has been written about in Vogue, Forbes, L'ŒIL de la Photographie, White Hot, and Art News among others and has been awarded the Rhonda Wilson Award, the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Seeing Women, and Critical Mass top 50.
Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart
Kathryn Shaw is a contemporary artist based in Ottawa, Canada. She works across painting, photography, sculpture and printmaking to explore ideas of memory, place, and the human experience. Her work often combines traditional materials with new technologies and reflects a curiosity about how people relate to their environments.
SPAO RESIDENCY
This exhibition is the culmination of a 6-month artist residency at the SPAO Centre, which captured an incubation of intense periods of research, self-discovery, mentorship, and boundary expansion within their practices. Throughout the process, the artists navigated the challenges of personal struggles, pandemic restrictions, and the difficulty of staying true to their individual artistic visions. The resulting work presents a dialogue of self-reflection, of acceptance, and perhaps even, of release.