ART GALLERY OF REGINA

Adrian Golban, David Garneau, Lara Felsing, Négar Devine-Tajgardan: The Thread of the Wish

curated by Sandee Moore

January 30 - March 28, 2026

Reception: Friday, January 30 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM

In practices spanning textiles, photography, painting, and sculpture, artists in The Thread of the Wish reveal weaving as both technique and metaphor for storytelling. As threads interlace in textiles, they weave together history, memory, heritage, and experience, showing how lives and identities are intertwined.

 

Textiles are deeply personal. They enclose our bodies in vulnerable moments, provide shelter and warmth, and signal identity. The stories these artists tell are likewise intimate.

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Négar Devine-Tajgardan transforms a photograph of her murdered uncle, which was long kept hidden behind another photograph in a family album. She slices the image into strips or separates it into threads; she then weaves these wisps into fabrics inspired by her family's daily life in Iran. Through this intimate process, she forges a renewed connection with her uncle and reclaims Persian design, healing from the trauma of Iran’s oppressive regime.

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Adrian Golban draws on Romanian traditions such as building dung walls on twig supports and weaving rugs from old clothing, but he reimagines these techniques beyond their utilitarian roots. His mudbrick wall, open on one side, offers only minimal shelter, while the clay tapestry spilling from a replica Neolithic loom is stripped of the warmth and comfort of a traditional textile. The clay bears impressions of everyday objects from Romania and Canada, while Knotted Vestiges also incorporates fragmented self-portraits, alluding to the challenges newcomers, cut off from their roots, face in forging a coherent identity.

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Lara Felsing’s practice is deeply rooted in the land of Northern Alberta and in Métis traditions passed down through generations. She sweeps the forest floor for fallen needles and discarded items to weave into baskets, and gathers foraged, found, and repurposed materials to tell the story of her local landscape. Heavy wool blankets—remnants of the Cold War once meant for nuclear emergencies—now support her patchwork of plant-dyed thrifted cotton. After devastating wildfires, she wrapped these blankets around charred tree trunks. Felsing’s work unflinchingly depicts climate extremes, natural cycles, human impact, and the threats of fire, industry, and war, yet offers hope for living in harmony with the land.

 

David Garneau depicts the woven-arrow sash, a key symbol of Métis identity, in bold slashes of paint, distilling its rich symbolism and flattening it into a text. In his allegorical paintings, he transforms the sash and juxtaposes it with other objects, expanding the story woven into the interlaced wool threads. He depicts the sash looped into a noose, swaddling a length of charred wood, or with its tasseled ends knotted in a code-like arrangement, prompting reflection on the unique challenges of a hybrid identity—one that bridges past and present, and exists within both Indigenous and settler cultures.

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Curated by Sandee Moore, The Thread of the Wish draws its title from Sigmund Freud’s essay Creative Writers and Daydreaming. In it, Freud writes, “Past, present, and future are strung together […] by the thread of the wish that runs through them.” This exhibition considers the thread of desire that connects past and future, including the desire for a better world, while encouraging viewers to consider how loose threads and tangled knots of memory, history, and hope are woven into our lives.