Slumber Party

ON VIEW: January 16 - March 8, 2026
RECEPTION: Friday, January 16 | 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Slumber Party brings together photo-based works by nine Canadian female and gender-nonconforming artists. Leaning into whimsy, fantasy, and camp, the exhibition revels in the subversive power of girlhood aesthetics, often dismissed as trivial or unserious. These artists embrace performativity and play in their work, showing how gender identities are shaped, challenged, and continually remade.

This exhibition is presented as part of a larger collaboration between SPAO and Giant Tiger in celebration of International Women’s Day. The exhibition is accompanied by a limited-edition T-shirt featuring work by Linh VH Nguyen, available in select Giant Tiger stores and online. All proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, supporting critical programs for women and gender-diverse people across Canada.

Linh VH Nguyen

Linh VH Nguyen is a visual artist exploring themes of inter-temporality, healing, and identity. She uses a variety of techniques including historical photographic processes and digital manipulation, meshing different elements together to create composites and collages. She also incorporates images from public archives as a way to reconnect and reclaim parts of her heritage from a dominant visual culture. She draws inspiration from her Vietnamese heritage, movement practices, critical theory as well as other artists such as Mieke Bal, Michiko Kon, and Lana & Lilly Wachowski.

Bridget Moser

Bridget Moser is a performance and video artist whose work blends elements of prop comedy, experimental theatre, performance art, absurd literature, existential anxiety and intuitive dance. She has presented work at venues including Remai Modern, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Front, Mercer Union, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Ontario, SPACES Cleveland and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Frieze, Canadian Art, Art in America, C Magazine, Artribune (Italy) and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s preeminent prize for contemporary visual artists, and received the 2023 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Visual Arts Award.

Fausta Facciponte

Fausta Facciponte is a visual artist and professor in the Art and Art History Program at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College. Her artistic practice spans photography and installation. She received her BA from the University of Toronto and her MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work has been showcased nationally and internationally and has been acknowledged in The Globe and Mail, Carousel Magazine, Now Magazine, Eyes In, and Flavorwire Magazine. Her photographs are in the collections at McMaster Museum of Art, Peel Art Gallery Museum + Archives, Art Gallery of Mississauga and Shelter Hotel in LA, California. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Jessica Berger

Jessica Berger, a lens-based artist currently based in Toronto, explores themes of identity, memory, and connection in her practice. With a keen interest in experimental processes, collage, and portraiture, she navigates the intricate dynamics between the self, others, objects, and places. Berger is a graduate of the Photography program, School of Image Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University.

Katherine Takpannie

Katherine Takpannie is an Ottawa-based urban Inuk photographer whose work explores identity, resilience, and Inuit worldviews. Self-taught, she photographs portraiture, landscapes, and politically engaged scenes to share the complexities of contemporary Inuit life. A graduate of the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program, she honours Inuit values such as inuuqatigiitsiarniq—respect and care for others—through her practice.

Takpannie received the National Gallery of Canada’s New Generation Photography Award in 2020, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Canada, BACA, the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the City of Ottawa Art Collection. Her photographs have appeared in Inuit Art Quarterly, Canadian Geographic, The Globe and Mail, and Elle. She will soon exhibit at Ādisōke, the new Ottawa Public Library–Library and Archives Canada facility.

Allison Morris

Allison Morris is a fine art photographer based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her practice explores themes of beauty, identity, performance, and the construction of femininity. Drawing on the history of women portrayed in art, she uses self-portraiture and traditionally feminized materials to challenge how we understand the feminine body and its relation to objects.

Laurence Philomène

Laurence Philomène is a non-binary artist from Montreal who creates colourful photographs and videos informed by their lived experiences as a chronically ill, transgender person. Their practice celebrates trans existence and studies identity as a space in constant flux through highly saturated, cinematic and vulnerable images. Laurence’s first monograph “Puberty”, in which the artist documents two years of their life through self-portraiture as they undergo hormonal replacement therapy, was published in 2022 by Yoffy Press (USA).

Barbara Cole

Barbara Cole's artwork is extensively collected by both public and private institutions and has been exhibited worldwide in such venues as the Canadian embassies in Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, Japan. Throughout her career, Cole has worked internationally on commercial projects and large-scale art commissions including installations for the Breast Cancer Centre in Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital and for Trump Hollywood, Florida. Cole has won prestigious awards such as the Grand Prix at the Festival International de le Protographie de Mode in Cannes, France. In 2012 the acclaimed documentary series, Snapshot: The Art of Photography II, features an episode devoted exclusively to Cole’s photographic practice. Cole is currently on the advisory board of the Seneca College Photography Department in Toronto. In 2023, teNeues Publishing House, Germany, created a comprehensive book of both Barbara’s underwater and studio work since 1985 called Between Worlds.

Cole is currently represented by Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto and Vancouver, Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal, Art Angels in Los Angeles and Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach.

Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart

Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart began experimenting with photography and self portraiture when she was 22 years old living in Montreal. Sage’s work makes reference to the contemporary advertising imagery found in bus stations and billboards, drawing inspiration from its vibrant colors and compositions. Her academic background in film and animation fueled a particular fascination with posters for film and TV.

Giant Tiger