Open Planes
Opening May 1, 2026, 7pm – 9pm
Show Run : May 2-17, 2026
In Open Planes, Heather Kai Smith examines the imagery of touch and interpersonal exchange. Working through drawing, painting and installation, Smith explores how bodies meet and negotiate one another across surfaces. Contact between subjects, and the ambiguity of their connectedness becomes both method and subject for the imagery: through weight, density and restraint. Smith considers how depictions of sensation can pose questions to the viewer. Archival imagery of collectivity and group ritual informs the work, activated through repetition and iteration to emphasize the dynamics between bodies rather than the individual figure. Rather than presenting the body as fixed, the artworks propose relationality: shaped by proximity and defined through exchange.
About the Artist
Heather Kai Smith is a visual artist and educator working from Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, BC, the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw, Snaw-naw-as, and Stzuminus people. She completed her BFA in Drawing from Alberta University of the Arts (2009) and her MFA at Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2017). Her current work explores the potential embedded within archival images of collectivity and group ritual activated through drawing, observation, and iteration. Her work has lent itself to animation, printmaking, and installation projects, emphasizing collaboration.
Smith has attended residencies across Canada, the United States, and Germany while exhibiting her work within various institutional and non-conventional spaces. Smith has taught visual arts classes at The University of Chicago, Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Vancouver Island University.
You can find more information about the artist at the following links:
Website: https://heatherkaismith.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/heatherkaismith/
Xchanges gratefully acknowledges the support of the Province of British Columbia and the Capital Regional District for our gallery programs.
