Hope & Fear is a contemporary art show featuring students, and alumni of the University of Alberta and Portage College. Works use mixed media, including print, sculpture, and performance, to explore the dialogue between hope and fear in the current socio-political landscape. 

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Over the past year we have witnessed, from a far, a huge refugee crisis in Europe, Brexit, a failed military coup in Turkey and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States despite his fascist, sexist, and aggressive rhetoric.  Last November during former UN Ambassador Stephen Lewis’ honorary doctorate acceptance speech at the University of Alberta, Steven Lewis spoke these impassioned words;

“I beg you to understand that the world has turned. It hasn't just changed; it's turned. And your collective response—moral, principled, determined, tenacious, indefatigable—it can save this world.”

Hope and Fear is a collective response to the ‘turned world’ in the form of an exhibition of artworks from the University of Alberta's Fine Art and Portage College’s Art and Design departments. Many different issues are raised and confronted from climate change to gender inequality, from the changes in oil production in Alberta to police corruption to the rise of ‘Alternative Facts’. Hope and Fear is a reflection of the anxieties of our era and about the hope we need to inspire in humans in our times.  

In his 2015 acceptance speech, Justin Trudeau famously said “we beat fear with hope. We beat cynicism with hard work.” Yes – of course: hard work is good, hard work is important and we are all committed to it. Artists around the world recognize that they have an extremely important job and a lot of hard work to do at this time. But, if as a society we all have our heads down working too hard we can’t see the steam train charging towards us. These artists have their heads up and eyes open and generously give to society images and objects that provoke, calm, bolster, shock. 

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Special thanks to Royden Mills, Marilene Oliver, Stephanie Johnson and Sarah Polkinghorn for making this show possible!