Exhibition

Friendship Through Culture

Erik Sano — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:03:51 +0000

Friendship Through Culture Erik Sano Feb 23, 2026

Dates

March 1, 2026 10:00am - May 29, 2026 7:00pm

Event Category

Friendship through Culture (2026) / 文化がわかる。心がかよう。 (2026)

JCCC Community Arts Exhibition

The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre is pleased to present Friendship Through Culture (2026), a community arts exhibition reflecting on the evolving meanings of a phrase that has long shaped Japanese Canadian cultural life.

This year’s exhibition explores the evolving meanings of a phrase that has long shaped Japanese Canadian cultural life. What first emerged as a gentle expression of survival and resilience in the face of discrimination has shifted over time into an open, if complex, practice of belonging. Today, Friendship Through Culture (2026) carries multiple potential interpretations—diasporic, generational, newly arrived, and hybrid—and asks us how culture can both preserve memory and create new ways of living together.

Exhibition Dates: March 1 – May 29, 2026

The exhibition features original works across a range of media, including painting, photography, textiles, sculpture, installation, video, and craft.

Browse Works:

Works 1 - 60 Works 61 - 139

Full List of Artists:

Select the Artists name to be taken directly to their work

Zere Abylgazina
David Akio
Asai
Asobu Art Collective
Laura Beaton
Janice Mende Bennink
David Bernhard
Connie Bist
Myroslava Boikiv
Declan Boushy
Diana Bullock
Elena Butkov
Marilena Isacescu Carlea
Chris Corridore
Barbara Eguchi
Lindsay Erdman
Alana Keiko Fleming
Elaine Hamelin-Mitchell | Rosso Art & Design
Steven Hasegawa
Hyedie Hashimoto
Deborah Hatanaka
Tibi Hegyesi
Kentaro Imoto
Neli Iordanova
Ruth A. Mora Izturriaga
Lakshmi Preethi Kamak
Kioni
Amy Lee
Tsutao Machida
Mihoko Maeno
Carin Katagiri Mahon
Michael Marcynuk
Betty Mochizuki
Stephen North
Mariana I. Padilla
Electra Pappa
Maryam Pazooki
Nancy Peng
Karen Perlmutter
Tamiko Potts
Michelle Ramos
Mio Reynolds
Riki
Robottobani
Karen Sekikawa 関河カレン
 Keiko Shintani
Thomas.A. Sokoloski
SOWL
Brenda Spielmann
Ken Sugamori
Manabu Takaishi
Jerrold Tanaka
Mui-Ling Teh
Beverley Thum
Yuki Tokita
Weichan Wang
Ebru Winegard
Rita Wong
Queenie Xu
Deniz Yilmaz
Ryo Yonekawa
Yu
Zhan Zhang

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Phase in My Journey Exhibition

Samphors Say — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 23:26:48 +0000

Phase in My Journey Exhibition Samphors Say Mar 3, 2025

Dates

April 5, 2025 10:00am - June 30, 2025 7:00pm

Event Category

The JCCC Arts Committee is pleased to announce that we will be participating in the CONTACT Photography Festival once again! Phase in my Journey, featuring artist Walter Borchenko and curated by Shin Sugino, will be on view from April 5 to June 30, 2025.

More about the show

The work of Canadian-born photographer Walter Borchenko represents a profound and singular exploration of the Modernist photographic aesthetic. This 20-year retrospective traces a remarkable journey, beginning with the evocative self-portrait, Self Portrait, Hollywood Florida (2006), and culminating in the integration of infra-red techniques in Grassy Brook - Talbot River Road (2024). Borchenko's work transcends homage, evolving the Modernist tradition into something new: a "Modernist evolved" aesthetic rather than a postmodern reinterpretation.

Over the last two decades, Borchenko has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the principles of Modernist photography. His dedication to achieving the essence of the image through meticulous camera work, optics, and lighting- eschewing heavy digital manipulation—is a rare practice in contemporary photography. The singularity of his approach is further heightened by his use of consistent digital capture technology throughout this period, providing continuity and integrity to his artistic evolution.

Borchenko's images are further elevated through the use of hand-made Japanese Awagami paper, which imbues his prints with a tactile depth and subtlety that harmonizes with the Modernist ethos. The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre is honored to present this unique and memorable exhibition, celebrating Borchenko's evolution of Modernist photography and his contribution to its legacy.

An Artist Talk will take place on May 24 at 2:00pm as part of Doors Open. See details here.

Spirit Place: The Magnificent Woodcut Art of Naoko Matsubara

Samphors Say — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 16:40:04 +0000

Spirit Place: The Magnificent Woodcut Art of Naoko Matsubara Samphors Say Aug 27, 2024

Dates

September 25, 2024 7:00pm-January 3, 2025 12:00pm

Event Category

Please note that the exhibit is now closing on January 3rd, 2025 at 12PM due to unforeseen circumstances. This is a few hours earlier than announced prior. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Nature is a sweeping backdrop of inspiration for renowned Japanese Canadian woodcut artist Naoko Matsubara. A distinguished print artist known for creating cheerful and joyful works, Matsubara’s images range from black and white to vibrant colour, intimate to monumental, playful to contemplative.

Spirit Place will explore the work and remarkable career of Naoko Matsubara. Since 1960, Matsubara has had over 80 exhibitions around the world, but none have focused on her creative process and the influence of nature and the architecture of her studio. Spirit Place acts not only as a retrospective of Matsubara’s work, but also a reflection on her creative process and the influence of nature, spirituality, and the studio where she works – her spirit place.

Forty dynamic woodcut prints will hang in the JCCC Art Gallery, along with her rollers, paints, brushes and handmade paper. Photographs depicting Matsubara in process in her studio will be hung, and a short documentary featuring the artist, her work, and her studio, will premiere.

Please join us for our opening reception on September 25th from 7-9:30 PM.

Opening Reception

More programming to be announced shortly!

Unchanging and Changing and Changing

Samphors Say — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 20:35:54 +0000

Unchanging and Changing and Changing Samphors Say Oct 31, 2023

Dates

September 23, 2023 10:00am - November 25, 2023 5:00pm

Event Category

Exhibition

Heritage

Community Event

'Unchanging and changing and changing' is a solo exhibition and collaborative Nihon-buyō dance & Taiko drum performance by Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka that features wearable paper artworks that are imbued with the life of the performers alongside the histories of craft and place that inform them.

A reflection on well-being and selfhood, the works unite and contrast needs for protective armours and “inverse armours,” the latter activated by dance, music, and friends to encourage expression and joy. Hatanaka reflects on personal aftershocks from tsunamis, both real and metaphorical. Her work integrates her formative childhood experience in dance at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre and is steeped with her recent time spent at a fourth generation paper mill in Japan. Her ethereal work collapse time and string together interconnected histories held within the threads, repairs and fibres of her practice: ancestral ties; the lineage of printmaking, inks, and natural dyes; personal narratives incorporating past printmaking blocks; and scraps of papers sewn into the next and the next work.

Videos share both a look at the Opening Night performance and the intergenerational experience of the papermakers in Japan and an intimate look at Hatanaka’s process while she was immersed in the very lands and community that create the specific paper she has used for over a decade. She intentionally chose a paper that is delicate yet strong, and heartfully shares its possibility into the future and its significance as an over 1000 year sustainable craft technology.

WASHI & ARTIST'S PROCESS

“The softness of the Japanese washi paper and its transparency represents the environment where the natural materials were picked, under a clear sky and near a magnificent river. The warmth and robustness of Japanese washi paper comes from the efforts of farmers and their love for this land where they have lived for several generations. It is thanks to this strong bond between people and nature that the Kashiki paper production company was able to produce Japanese washi paper.” — Kashiki Seishi, fourth generation paper mill in Japan where Hatanaka was an artist in residence.

The durability of washi and the tenacity of its long-standing techniques behave as a symbol for resilience that resonates with Hatanaka’s diasporic identity. A dynamic bond between material and body is present, resulting in personal reflections on the various ways that connections to ancestral crafts nurture a meaningful integration of art-making, identity-making, and community-building.

In her linocut print work, Hatanaka embeds impressions in the washi to convey topographical imageries that resemble chiseled snow, stone, water, earthquakes, or the gesture of a map. These organic forms use pattern-making and repetition to reference mental and emotional geographies as much as physical ones.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & CONTRIBUTORS

Curator: Chiedza Pasipanodya

Nihon Buyo Dance & Taiko Drum Performance: Danielle Yamashita, Katherine Yamashita, Jody Chan, Wy Joung Kou

Musical Performance: Benja, Peach Luffe

DJs: DJ Velma

Documentary Video & Photography: Johnny Nghiem

Collaborative Photo Work: Maya Fuhr, Holly Chang, Ashok Mathur

Advisory Support: Johnny Le

Fabrication: Yorgo Liapis, Dylan Moore

Washi Wearable Modelling: Benja, Peach Luffe, Sima Sepehri, Elissa Mielke, YGC, Leah Mersky, Felicia Daisy, Mist Walker

Production Assistance: Akash Inbakumar, Yahn Nemirovsky, Felicia Daisy, Gideon Näf, Danny Cardoso

Graphic Design: Christine Xia

Performance Video: Zachary Hertzman and Johnny Nghiem

Special thanks to Kashiki Seishi, Kayoko Ichinomiya, Patel Brown Gallery, Studio RAW and Raging Asian Womxn Taiko Drummers, Victor Chin, Max McLarty, Deborah and Glenn Hatanaka, Julie Cawthorne, Miao Liu, Cybèle Young, Tatsuyuki Kitaoka, Sameer Cash, Crispin Day, James Arthurs, Su Yen Chong, Mayumi Lashbrook, Claire Shea, John Donald, JCCC Art Committee and Ayame Kai dancers: Susan, Jackie and Tami, Hisanao Kataoka, Akari Kataoka, Chi Family, and The Japanese Paper Place.

This exhibition was made possible through generous funding from the Canada Council of the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

Artist in Residence: Alison Kobayashi

Erik Sano — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:37:57 +0000

Artist in Residence: Alison Kobayashi Erik Sano Jun 22, 2026

Dates

July 2, 2026 10:00am - July 31, 2026 7:00pm

Event Category

Exhibition

JCCC Gallery

If you’re wandering the halls of the JCCC this July, come by the gallery. If you’re lucky, you might see artist Alison Kobayashi developing work for presentation later this year. Kobayashi will be in residence at the JCCC Gallery during July, prototyping work for her project, Electric Neon Clock.

Electric Neon Clock is an installation and live, performed documentary that adapts Kobyashi’s great-grandfather's custodial case file, documents which detail the dispossession and internment of the artist’s family. These violent records are blended with family interviews, sound, video, and archival photos, as Kobayashi asks the audience to participate in interpreting and undermining their original intention.

Electric Neon Clock will be on view at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, from August to October 2026, but visitors to the JCCC will have a chance to see the artist at work during the month of July and attend two open studio days:

July 11th | 4-5 PM | Part of Natsu Matsuri Programming
July 26th | 2-4 PM

A.S.M. Kobayashi @asmkobayashi is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid, interactive work mixes documentary and fiction through video, performance, installation, and illustration. Her critically acclaimed performance, Say Something Bunny!, based on found audio recordings, was heralded as "The best new theater experience in town" by Vogue and a NYTimes critics’ pick. Additionally, SSB! was listed in Time Out’s 2017 top ten productions and BOMB’s Best of Performance in 2018. She is based in New York City and Toronto where she is producing her documentary performance Electric Neon Clock.

1) A.S.M. Kobayashi performing at Lincoln Centre for the Arts. Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien, © Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
2) Still from Kobayashi's film Case No.2304. Courtesy of the artist.

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Third Places: Japanese Canadian Sites of Gathering

Samphors Say — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 12:56:07 +0000

Third Places: Japanese Canadian Sites of Gathering Samphors Say Mar 12, 2025

Dates

April 20, 2025 10:00am-September 30, 2026 7:00pm

Event Category

Third Places are places that aren’t home and aren’t work, where people gather and find community.

For Japanese Canadians of all generations, creating third places in Toronto has been a powerful way to make space after being displaced. The exhibit considers the importance of such places for Japanese Canadians over the past 70 years and the future of Japanese Canadian community spaces.

Featuring a large, hand-illustrated map, interactive panels, and audiovisual components, Third Places shares stories of 12 significant Japanese Canadian gathering places in Toronto. The exhibit reflects the diversity of the community and encourages visitors to think about their own experience of place and community.

Exhibit Acknowledgments:

Curatorial team: Vidhya Elango, Theressa Takasaki

Map Designer: Alysha Dawn Puopolo

Graphic Designer: Sarah Doi

Research Assistants: Kei Nakatsu, Sakura Ariga, Anzu Hara

Research Support: Yves Chang, Abigail Brown

Advisors: Sandy Chan, Anzu Hara, Su Yen Chong, Karen Webb, Jan Nobuto

Thanks very much to all focus group and interview participants and leaders of community organizations whose voices and perspectives helped form this exhibit.

Check out the online complement to our exhibit, showing even more JC sites of gathering!

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Omote Ura

Erik Sano — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:57:38 +0000

Omote Ura Erik Sano Feb 24, 2026

Dates

March 8, 2026 8:00am - May 10, 2026 11:00pm

Event Category

Exhibition

Community Event

Heritage

Omote Ura 表裏 opens with Hina matsuri as an invocation to the resurgent spirit of a spring river after the winter thaw.

In times of systemic change, matsuri rituals can be a collective container for processes of endings into beginnings. Through the works of three Nikkei artists, Nami Ueno, Marina Van Raay, and Yuka Yamaguchi, the exhibition examines the relational interdependence between the unseen ura that activates the omote of visible change and renewal.

The fertile messiness of an artistic studio practice, or a queer “failure” needed in creative risk-taking and innovation, are the inner workings of emergence. Generative spillage in the hallways of the JCCC offers a new space to notice what quietly arises at the threshold of transformation and growth.

Verging on expectations of kawaii aesthetics, the artworks stray into unknown and contradictory terrains that ruffle edges of errancy and bold speculative futures, that omote the ura. The artists’ slow material practices in painting, ceramics and illustration wander the wilderness of liminal experience, as processes of evolution through feminist Nikkei perspectives that intersect personal and systemic transformations.

Artists

Nami Ueno

I am a visual artist from Japan working in painting, papercuts, and sculptures. My passion for art began early in life, leading me to study at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. As a single mother, I had to engage in various forms of labor over the years, but upon relocating to Toronto in 2016, I was finally able to fully embrace my artistic practice without any limitations related to my age or gender. This newfound creative freedom served as a powerful source of motivation, driving me to create art that inspires others to pursue their own dreams. Until 2019, I worked mainly in illustration. Through the 2020 mentorship program by TAC, I successfully expanded my artistic fields to create three-dimensional works. In July 2025, I returned to Japan, where I continue to deepen my practice and explore new directions in my art. My work investigates the relationships between the body, mind, power, and control, and how they are shaped by cultural ideas and biases that often perpetuate oppression. Through this exploration, I seek to illuminate hidden structures that influence our choices and perceptions, opening space for more authentic forms of expression.

Marina Van Raay

Marina Van Raay is a Canadian and Japanese ceramic artist based in Hamilton, Ontario. She is a graduate of the Craft and Design Bachelor’s program at Sheridan College and currently an Artist in Residence at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Van Raay was born in Japan and moved to Canada at the age of 5 and through her work, explores the cultural experiences that have shaped her life.

Yuka Yamaguchi

Born and raised in Japan, she is a self-taught artist whose practice began from an early fascination with the inner life of the body and mind. She studied social work before choosing to move to Canada--to challenge herself, to live beyond familiarity, and to experience cultural diversity firsthand. Life as an immigrant brought its own set of complexities. In navigating a new language, new landscapes, and shifting notions of belonging, she turned to drawing as a way to understand and express her evolving identity. After living in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Kingston, she settled in Saskatoon, where she continues to create work rooted in intuition, memory and the intimate dialogue between body and self.

Curator

Hitoko Okada

Hitoko Okada is a queer, Nikkei, interdisciplinary artist researcher based in Hamilton, Ontario. Since studying fashion design at the International Academy of Design in Toronto in 2005, their artistic practice has evolved across theatre, fashion, installation and curatorial projects. Their current research explores queering futurities through Japanese indigo as an interspecies yokai. Their work in costumes includes seasons at The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Grand Theatre in London, Mirvish Productions in Toronto. Their artistic projects and collaborations have been presented across Southern Ontario including Cambridge Art Galleries, Art Gallery of Burlington, Centre for Artistic and Social Practice, Cobalt Connects, The Garden of Repairs, and The Royal Botanical Gardens. Okada has deepened her practice through national and international residencies including Banff Centre for the Arts, The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Canada; Haystack Mountain School of Craft in USA; Kawashima Textile School in Kyoto; and at Awonoyoh with master indigo dyer Takayuki Ishii in Kanagawa, Japan. Their work has been recognized through multiple grants and awards. Okada is a member of the Double Pendulum interdisciplinary performance group in Hamilton, and volunteers with Backyard Harvest Organic Urban Farms for continuous learning.

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Japanese Connection Stories

Erik Sano — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:44:05 +0000

Japanese Connection Stories Erik Sano Jan 5, 2026

Dates

January 1, 2026 10:00am - March 31, 2026 11:00pm

Event Category

Wendy Tanaka is a fine art portrait photographer whose work focuses on social diversity. She has recently begun a personal journey to rediscover her Japanese heritage. A fourth generation Japanese Canadian, Wendy’s family experienced the government-enforced dispersal from the West Coast and the subsequent assimilation into broader Canadian society. Through photographic portraits and personal narratives, Wendy expresses her family’s enduring connection to their Japanese roots. Her current photographic series, Japanese Connection Stories, is on display at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre through March 2026.

This photographic collection explores Tanaka’s family’s identification with and connection to their Japanese heritage. Following the government-enforced Evacuation of Japanese Canadians from the West Coast during World War II, many displaced families eventually assimilated into Canadian society, relinquishing much of their cultural identity to avoid further persecution. As a fourth-generation descendant of the Evacuation, Tanaka has only recently begun to explore her heritage. To begin this journey, she reached out to relatives across six generations, asking about their connection to their heritage — how they identify as Japanese Canadians, and what continues to link them to their roots. Tanaka captures her family members in photographic portraits accompanied by objects that symbolize their bonds. While traditional heritage portraiture often ties cultural identity to heirlooms, Tanaka’s family’s connections are represented through new acquisitions, as many of their belongings were lost to dispossession during the Evacuation. To deepen the narrative, Tanaka also invited family members to express their connections in their own words. This personal photographic collection offered Tanaka’s family an opportunity to reflect on their ties to Japanese heritage, revealing connections that might otherwise have remained unspoken. Through this work, Tanaka hopes to inspire others to rediscover their own family roots and reflect on how heritage continues to shape identity today.

The Shape of Loss

Yuko Matsuki — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 19:47:20 +0000

The Shape of Loss Yuko Matsuki Aug 25, 2025

Dates

October 4, 2025 7:00pm-January 23, 2026 7:00pm

Event Category

Join us during Nuit Blanche and beyond to slow down and reflect through Japanese Canadian artist Louise Noguchi’s The Shape of Loss, on view from October 4th until January 23rd, 2026 in the JCCC Gallery.

Noguchi’s visionary work brings the Japanese Canadian loss of livelihood, property and dignity into physical form through a co-created, live installation during the all-night Nuit Blanche festival on October 4th at 7pm For 12 hours, artists will draw a huge life-sized hull of each fishing boat confiscated from Japanese Canadians during WWII, while announcers read aloud each boat’s name, owner, type and size, and annotators record this information.

Visitors are invited to linger, bear witness, and stay for as long as they would like. Tea will be served outside the gallery and books on Japanese Canadian history will be available to complement the performance.

See more details about Nuit Blanche, here.

The drawn hulls and a time-lapse video of the performance will remain in the gallery until the show closes on January 23, 2026

Citations:

University of British Columbia Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Japanese Canadian Research Collection. JCPC-12b-010
Confiscated boats held at the Annieville Dyke on the Fraser River in British Columbia. Courtesy Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre (NNM 2010.4.2.11.A)

Shifting Skies, Changing Forms

Yuko Matsuki — Mon, 26 May 2025 18:41:02 +0000

Shifting Skies, Changing Forms Yuko Matsuki May 26, 2025

Dates

July 9, 2025 6:30pm - September 5, 2025 7:00pm

Event Category

Community Event

Heritage

Exhibition

An Exhibition of Japanese Canadian Legacies, Community Fund Arts Recipients

Shifting Skies, Changing Forms evocatively represents how the artists in the exhibition examine very personal and family histories and the translation of these experiences through generations. They explore history, identity, transformation, and reconstruction, not only of historical materials but also of our understanding of how this difficult and complex past has influenced identity, sense of self, and artistic expression.

Artists are:

Emiko Tatebe Berman
Gail Burgin
Suzanne Ruth Liska
Barbara “Miiko” Nishimura-Gravlin
Paula Tamiko Potts
Stephanie Akiko Takagi
Roddy Isao Tasaka
The Kimono Remake Project

Their work honours our elders past and present as we strive to remember our heritage and develop a strong Japanese Canadian identity. The exhibit has evolved into an incredible multi-disciplinary celebration of film, dance, and fashion in Kobayashi Hall for our opening and an exceptional exhibit featuring both sculpture and wall art in the gallery.