Current and Upcoming Shows
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She Did What She Could
Samantha McLeish | MFA in Sculpture
November 3 - 21, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 5, 7 - 9 p.m.
(U of A faculty, staff, students and invited guests)
View the pdf E-vite
About the show
I feel like a stranger existing in my own body.
I feel like a stranger existing in my own body.
I feel like a stranger existing in my own body.
The transition from girlhood to womanhood is not an isolated or singular biological change; instead, it is the start of the mind's complete re-orientation from autonomous agency to the predetermined social expectations of femininity. As young as nine years old, girls are told that getting our first period means becoming a woman. For me, the association of being women is now framed around pain, embarrassment, and fear. I remember mourning the loss of my sense of self, my body, and the choices that I once had.
Through sculptural installation, printmaking, and textile based artwork, She Did What She Could explores the relationship between women's bodies and the societal structures that seek to define them. This work engages feminist theory, object theory, and concepts of bodily autonomy to examine the ways in which agency is affected by inherited gender expectations. The concept of the gendered obligations, specifically what is labeled as ‘women's roles’, are highlighted through the use of textiles and textile based practices. Textiles act as a symbol to a generational echo that links women centric spaces with their perspectives and lived experiences. It is through the lives of women where one can understand how intergenerational trauma can be interwoven and embodied within textiles. Fabric, fibre and thread start to become sites in which women are able to reclaim agency, assert their body autonomy and resist systemic oppression.
About the artist
Samantha McLeish is a Canadian-based artist currently completing the Master of Fine Art program specializing in sculpture at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Originally, McLeish is from Holland Landing, Ontario, where she developed her art practice into a combination of drawing/printmaking, textiles, ceramics and object making. McLeish’s research in her current graduate studies centres on women's lived experience, exploring her maternal lineage to examine how intergenerational trauma can be embedded within textile practices. Her work has been supported by the 2025-2026 Canada Graduate Scholarship - Masters (CGS M), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Underbelly
Maria Rosati | MFA in Printmaking
November 3 - 21, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 5, 7 - 9 p.m.
(U of A faculty, staff, students and invited guests)
View the pdf E-vite
About the show
Underbelly, whose title is a borrowed term describing the abdomen of an animal that is typically soft, vulnerable, and unprotected, investigates the relationship between the body and the inner-world of shame. Rooted in an autoethnographic narrative and positioned within critical fat studies, the exhibition traces Maria Rosati’s personal history of wrestling with the determined wrongness of her body and the correlation between fatness and morality. Using her body as a site for performance, understood through the language of printmaking, soft sculpture, craft as women’s work, and the combination of text and image, Rosati embraces the feminine, vulnerable, and monstrous. Rosati asks viewers to sit in their discomfort with care and tenderness, as she must in making the work, as a way of divorcing the shame we all hold toward our bodies to find liberation, empathy, and forgiveness.
About the artist
Maria Rosati is an artist and printmaker with a focus in silkscreen and textiles. Originally from Southern Ontario, she obtained her BFA at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2023 and is completing her MFA in Printmaking at the University of Alberta. Positioned within critical fat studies, Rosati’s work looks at the intersection between fatness and internal shame-scapes. Rooted in an autoethnographic narrative, Rosati’s research traces her personal history of wrestling with her body and the expectations of womanhood she feels she has not met. Using her body as a site for performance, understood through the language of printmaking, soft sculpture, craft as women’s work, and the combination of text and image, she investigates tainted femininity and failure through the lens of fatness, morality, and girlhood. By using uncomfortable text, cropping, and tension in material and content, Rosati challenges the prominent discourse surrounding fat bodies through her work to find liberation and joy.
2026-2027 Exhibitions
FALL 2026
September 8 - October 3, 2026
Climates of Health: The Weather Inside Us
An International group exhibition with artworks by Sean Caulfield & Marilène Oliver, April Dean, Jonathan S. Green, Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau, Yoonmi Nam, Koichi Yamamoto, Ryuta Endo, Hisaharu Motoda, Hiroaki Oishi, Toshiya Takahama, Motohiro Tomii | With collaboration & research by Anne Hicks, Evan Davies, Aman Ullah, Candace Ramjohn & Joan Greer
October 13-24, 2026
What I Made When My People Were Dying
Aynaz Raofian and Mona Sahi | MFA Intermedia
Reception: Thurs. Oct. 15
November 3-21, 2026
MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Maria Rosatti & Samantha McLeish
Reception: Thurs. Nov. 5
December 1-19, 2026
MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Kate Bang & Carla Taylor
Reception: Thurs Dec 03
Visiting FAB Gallery
FAB Gallery Hours:
- Tuesday - Friday | 11a.m. - 5 p.m.
- Saturday | 12-3 p.m.
- Sunday & Monday | closed
Accessibility
FAB Gallery's second floor is now accessible via a barrier free entrance and ramp from the FAB/HUB pedway. Visitors should proceed to the gallery main entrance of FAB 1-01 first. Gallery staff will be pleased to provide second floor access upon request.
FAB Gallery Location:
1-1 Fine Arts Building
University of Alberta
112 Street and 89 Avenue