KAG: All that You Change Changes You

Laura St. Pierre

The Central Gallery
September 26, 2026 to January 9, 2027

Curated by Crystal Mowry

All That You Change Changes You shines a light on Laura St. Pierre’s decade-long approach to two survivalist tropes: scavenging and sowing. Borrowing its title from the opening lines of Parable of the Sower (1993), a novel by the late author, Octavia E. Butler, this exhibition brings together works made over the last decade, all produced against the backdrop of a built environment transformed by absence and adaptation. In Butler’s dystopian novel, the narrative unfolds through the journals of a teenage protagonist who imagines a new belief system along with her new experiences. Informed by this narrative and other forms of speculative fiction, St. Pierre’s work similarly imagines an unstable future where new models of existence emerge out of necessity, yet remain rooted in old knowledge.

In the video installation Spectral Garden II (2018), viewers are surrounded by haunting projections of a submerged make-shift garden, slowly rotating and lit by unseen flames from above. The garden is accompanied by photographs of other “specimens” and detritus collected by The Scavenger (a character conceived and brought to life by St. Pierre) and stored in improvised vessels for human and plant life alike. St Pierre does not depict The Scavenger directly but instead focuses on the fruits of their labour. The Scavenger is seen through the decisions they make as they transform their environment—which plants they have given a place of honour; which vessels they entrust to this task—decisions weighed with a fraught past and an uncertain future in mind. More recently, St. Pierre introduced another character to her work—The Sower. Unlike the covert labour performed by The Scavenger, The Sower can be seen at work in the overlooked and unkempt corners of an anonymous city. Performed by the artist dressed in a protective suit to shield them from environmental contaminants, The Sower is intent on preserving the fledgling ecosystems left behind by rogue civilizations.

This exhibition includes a revised version of Les Porteuses, an installation St. Pierre created in relation to a similarly titled performance. Les Porteuses is a matriarchal reinterpretation of the French-Canadian folktale of a bewitched canoe and loggers who gamble their souls to cheat time and fate. In St. Pierre’s reimagining, a procession of brave women from the future enters a pact with the devil in order to return to the 21st century in time-travelling canoes. Landing in Kamloops in 2026, they collect plant specimens from the Southern Interior to revegetate a barren future landscape. Throughout these works, St. Pierre reminds us of the value of even the most minute forms of plant life, land, water, and light. Amid the decay is an underlying sense of optimism; although future generations may inherit an inhospitable landscape, it is not without hope. St. Pierre highlights the value of unassuming treasures, that anything we find can be saved, and in turn, what we save may save us.

Laura St. Pierre: All That You Change Changes You is organized and circulated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery. Curated by Crystal Mowry. The MacKenzie receives ongoing support from the South Saskatchewan Community Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, SaskCulture, City of Regina, University of Regina, and Saskatchewan Arts Board