Koffler Arts 2026 Exhibition & Presentations
December 3, 2025
Koffler Arts is thrilled to announce some of our upcoming 2026 exhibitions and presentations scheduled in our main gallery and in Koffler301, Toronto’s newest gallery space to be largely dedicated to showcasing the work of Toronto-based artists.
“Koffler Arts is continuing to grow as a home for contemporary, multidisciplinary work from diasporic Jewish artists within a truly pan-cultural creative offering,” says General Director, Matthew Jocelyn. “With the opening of our second gallery and performance space, Koffler301, our capacity for celebrating work from around the world and from close to home has expanded considerably, and we are taking advantage of every opportunity to explore and expand the boundaries of who we are and what we do.”
In the main gallery, we welcome artworks that transcend time and space by internationally acclaimed artists from South Africa, Canada, and Poland. In Koffler301, we welcome dynamic mutli-discliplinary artists from Toronto whose works explore legacy, interconnectivity, and transformation. Additional exhibitions in Koffler301 to be announced throughout the year.
“While not yet complete, 2026 will bring us the captivating video work of South African artist William Kentridge, the enthralling, immersive installations of Canadian artists Gillian Iles, Chason Yaboah and Cybèle Young, the eloquent crystal towers of Polish artist Natalia Romik, and a legacy project of the work of the late Sybil Goldstein. And Koffler 301 leaves us room to continue to invent last-minute projects alongside those programmed in advance.
Our multi-lingual literary salon, WORLD PLAY, curated by theatre artist Alon Nashman, will continue throughout the year, and there will be much, much more to look forward to. The theme is this: we love the work, and we want you to discover it. It’s free!”
Winter 2026
Main Gallery: William Kentridge’s film series, Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot, Presented by Koffler Arts, with work from the William Kentridge Studio
The main gallery will be converted into a cozy, living room space where guests are invited to take off their coats and get comfortable, while enjoying a hot beverage as they view films from one of the most prolific artists of our time, shot during the COVID-19 pandemic featuring the artist and his doppelgänger.
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions. His method combines drawing, writing, film, performance, music, theatre, and collaborative practices to create works of art that are grounded in politics, science, literature and history, yet maintaining a space for contradiction and uncertainty.
Koffler301: Sybil Goldstein
Celebrating the legacy of Sybil Goldstein.
Sybil Goldstein (b. 1954, Montreal; d. 2012, Toronto) was a Toronto painter, curator and educator. She studied art at Dawson College and The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She moved to Toronto in the early 1980s where she became a founding member of the ChromaZone collective, Loop Gallery and an active member of Readhead Gallery in Toronto. She has curated national and international exhibitions including Fire and Ice, Zurich and OkromaZone in Berlin. Her work appears in numerous catalogs and she edited The Art of Tim Jocelyn, published by McLelland & Stewart.
WORLD PLAY
An ongoing series, curated by Alon Nashman, celebrates Toronto’s extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity – a city where over 200 languages are spoken. Audiences experience a rich tapestry of voices through brief readings of poetry, theatre, fiction, philosophy, and song lyrics each read in their original language and accompanied by an English translation. Each evening will be dedicated to a theme around which all the readings will coalesce.
Themes explored include Trees and Dreams.
Spring 2026
Main Gallery: Gillian Iles, GLORIOUS CATASTROPHE
GLORIOUS CATASTROPHE constructs a composite reality of division, impermanence and the contradictory confluence of wonder, dereliction, glory, devastation, power and precarity.
Since 1997, Gillian Iles has exhibited in public institutions, artist-run centres and commercial galleries in Europe, USA, South America and Canada. Ideas draw from geopolitical events and their relationship to individual experience. She finds commentary within power dynamics, social constructs and systems of belief related to colonial Western culture; particularly their manufactured existence, illusionary value, tenuous persistence and questionable motives. Contradiction and precarity are relevant at all stages – within idea, material choices and methods of presentation. Gillian’s practice spans painting, sculpture, constructions, sound & video. Installations merge real and illusionary space into a composite of realities and points of view. Often large-scale, her installations respond to the opportunities of a space and ways to implicate the viewer. She is a founding member of two artist collective galleries in Toronto - Propeller and Loop, and has been with Red Head collective since 2012. She teaches at OCADU and Sheridan College in Canada.
Koffer301: Chason Yeboah
Changing the gallery space with fabric, plants, and her signature crocheted dolls, into a site exploring her themes of ancestral history, female empowerment, and healing.
Chason Yeboah is an African-Caribbean self-taught textile sculptor, doll maker, and story-teller exploring the oscillation of ancestral communion through woven, reconstructed, and (un) raveled structures. Many of her works directly focus on themes of shame, loss of identity, sexuality, the notion and practice of self-love, and an acknowledgement of the human form, with a primary focus on marginalized folks. Her desire is to explore the interconnectivity of these themes and, be it through her inclusive dolls, personification structures, or “safe space” creations, provoke more conversation on communal awareness
WORLD PLAY
The theme explored this season is Freedom.
Summer 2026
Main Gallery: Natalia Romik, PLAGUE CRYSTALS
The newest chapter in a nomadic artistic research project that examines the forms of “plague” shaping contemporary life.
Natalia Romik, PhD (b. 1983, Poland) is a political scientist, architect, designer, artist, and historian. She holds a doctoral degree from the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London (2018), where her thesis, Post-Jewish Architecture of Memory within Former Eastern European Shtetls, combined historical scholarship with contemporary architectural and artistic methodologies to investigate (post-)Jewish architectures of memory. Her book Architecture of Memory, expanding on this research, was published by UCL Press in 2025.
Koffler301: Toronto Outdoor Art Fair 65th Anniversary
Toronto Outdoor Art Fair celebrates its 65th anniversary with Art Nest 2026, inviting artists to reflect on what it means to reach this milestone—both for an organization and in the human life cycle.
WORLD PLAY
The theme explored this season is Food.
Fall 2026
Main Gallery: Cybèle Young, KAMIPHONY (Will You Carry This For Me?)
A rhythmic meeting of paper and light in shifting states.
Cybèle Young is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, book arts, experimental film and animation, performance, and participatory projects. Her decades-long collaboration with Japanese paper anchors a practice concerned with transformation, ritual, and shifting perspectives—from intricate paper miniatures to kinetic installations and surreal time-based experiments. Drawing from Dada, Fluxus, and the anthropology of play, she builds poetic structures that unsettle the familiar, and open space for new forms of attention and imaginative interaction.
For media inquiries, please contact Melissa Than mthan@kofflerarts.org.