Saturday, 25 October, 11:00 am - 3:00 p.m. | PWYC
Departure/return: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
This event is for ages 16+
Distance: 20km round-trip
Difficulty: All levels
This guided cycling tour visits four exceptional galleries in one memorable day with support from CycleWR. The leisurely-paced rides between galleries allow plenty of time to appreciate each collection while showcasing why the Waterloo region leads in both arts and cycling infrastructure. Expert marshals from Cycle WR will lead a memorable cycling gallery tour discussing the exhibition themes of displacement, housing, cultural heritage, and environmental sustainability.
Starting at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
The Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery
The Grebel Gallery
University of Waterloo Art Gallery
Stop #1: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
Auto-Biography: Vehicles of identity, community, and globalization
Featuring: Greg Curnoe, Jason Lujan, Lauren Fournier, Melanie Smith, Yan Wen Chang, and objects from the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum
Curated by Darryn Doull
This group exhibition looks to the road as a connective infrastructure which grounds so much of modern life. It is set in relation to contemporary car culture and commuter life along the corridor with the busiest stretch of highway in North America. The project isn’t just about cars, though. These are vehicles for a vast array of social, economic, and inter-cultural distillations of globalization. The invited artists explore aspects of self, hyper-specific communities, and the horizontality of animal, machine and human, whilst historical museological objects establish additional regional context, connecting vehicular histories to a sense of place in Waterloo Region, and highlighting the subtle ways that vehicles become a part of memory and identity.
Stop #2: Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery
Beyond the Threshold
Featuring: Marzi Alimo, Claire Anderson, Phillip Bandura, D’Andrea Bowie, Judy Chartrand, Michael Flaherty, Sun Forest, Cat Hart, Lance Isaacs, Jennifer Anne Kelly, Raegan Little, Solange Roy, Indira Singh, Mohammad Tabesh, Jessie Tesolin, Loriane Thibodeau, Matt Walker, Jes Young.
Now more than ever, housing in Canada is in crisis. In 2021, more than one in ten Canadians reported experiencing homelessness in their lifetime. But homelessness isn’t always visible. With rising costs of living, inflation, and widening inequality, hidden homelessness—like couch-surfing, or overcrowded housing—is on the rise. In Waterloo Region alone, chronic homelessness increased by 129% between 2020 and 2024. Beyond The Threshold brings together the work of 18 artists from across the country who confront these realities through deeply personal and intersectional lenses. Their work speaks to the complex, and often painful, relationship between identity, place, and survival. Together, these artists offer a glance at what home can look like in the face of instability, change, and hope.
Stop #3: Grebel Gallery
DRAFTS 6 – Mapping Diasporic Identities
Featuring: Wen Li, Tazeen Qayyum, Sumaira Tazeen, Paria Shahverdi, JJ Lee
Art Director Faseeh Saleem
Curator Soheild Esfahani
DRAFTS 6 – Mapping Diasporic Identities brings together six artists whose practices span painting, sculpture, installation, video, and multimedia storytelling. Each draws on personal histories, cultural heritage, and lived experiences in the diaspora to create works that question conventional ideas of identity and belonging. Their art reflects on themes such as displacement, resilience, gender, memory, and cultural hybridity, offering alternative narratives that challenge dominant perspectives. Through diverse materials and approaches, these artists invite viewers to consider how stories are carried across borders and how identity is continuously negotiated, reshaped, and reclaimed
Stop #4: University of Waterloo Art Gallery
Brenda Mabel Reid: Underlay
Brenda Mabel Reid’s ongoing large-scale quilt project Underlay explores quilts, architecture, and gender-queerness. Reid’s work challenges binary gender norms and uses quilted-architectural forms to explore quilting as a method of making a queer space that brings people together. In a society predicated on productivity and a 24-hour news and entertainment cycle routinely focusing on crisis and spectacle, Reid proposes the nap as a restorative political action that incites us to revive ourselves and take up space in a joyful manner. As an object that encourages social engagement, Underlay endeavors to provide a safe space for reflection, regeneration, and community-building.