ASYLUM | JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 2025

SPAO: Photographic Arts Centre, Ottawa, ON

Curator: Katie Lydiatt

In this exhibition, Johnston and Paluzzi highlight the materials accumulated in the creation of an arts practice, and the emotional, physical, and conceptual weight these objects hold. Props, novelty items, prototypes, and paper ephemera are housed inside a cardboard shrine. Each box is a miniature stage, an assemblage of references, memories, and gestures that illustrate the labor and weight of building a single image. The cardboard installation pays reference to obsolescence, protection, and isolation, while also raising larger questions about trauma and mental illness. Where do we turn when our minds feel fragile? How do we construct spaces—physical or emotional—that allow us to process, create, and survive? The works on display honor SPAO as a space of solace and creativity, demonstrating how such sanctuaries enable transformation. The layers of this exhibition—both material and emotional—invite viewers to reflect on the delicate balance between containment and release.

ARTIST RESIDENCY | JUNE-JULY, 2025

Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, Banff, AB

Led by faculty Joi T. Arcand, Whess Harman, August Klintberg, and Michael Turner, Visual Arts Thematic Residency – Get LIT! Language, Image, Text invites visual artists working in all mediums to explore language, image, words, and text through self-directed studio practice and research-creation.

From the illuminated manuscripts of the Book of Kells to traditional Chinese art that combines poetry, calligraphy, and painting, words and language have existed in visual art for millennia as a way to construct meaning beyond, and in conjunction with, pictorial representation.

How are contemporary artists using words and language to disrupt, protest, fight, evoke, comment, critique, share, and communicate? Where do these conversations sit today?

THROUGH THE GROUND GLASS: REFRAMING WILLIAM JAMES TOPLEY | JUNE 2024 - FEBRUARY 2025

Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON

Curator: Rebecca Basciano

This exhibition is a dialogue between the work of historical Ottawa photographer William James Topley and six contemporary artists: Lori Blondeau, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Anique Jordan, Neeko Paluzzi, Adrian Stimson and Geneviève Thauvette. These artists engage with image manipulation, hauntology, costumes and theatricality to subvert narratives and reclaim power through portraiture.

Topley’s use of the composite technique (akin to cut-and-paste collage) demonstrates photography’s ability to craft powerful narratives. Similarly, the contemporary artists in this exhibition harness the principle of this technique to resist, reconstruct and critique, in order to catalyze new realities.

BEHOLD: QUEER PERSPECTIVES OF SELF-REPRESENTATION | JUNE-SEPTEMBER 2024

La Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen, Moncton, NB

Curator : Annie France Noël

The exhibition offers a platform for queer bodies and relationships, exploring the links between the individual and representation from a perspective of self-determination. The artists featured – Kama La Mackerel, Kyle Lasky + Wynne Neilly, Darby Minott Bradford, Neeko Paluzzi, Laurence Philomène, and Xénia – invite the viewer into their most intimate spaces, and use their work to challenge the dynamics between the observer and the observed. By redefining, first and foremost for themselves, what inter- and intra-personal relationships might look like, their practices call upon history, territory, the ambiguity of words, performance and photography.

LA MOTTE SPONGIEUSE | MARCH 2024

LabO Theatre, Ottawa, ON

Director: Dillion Orr | Writer: Michel Ouellette

Experience La motte spongieuse de Michel Ouellette at LabO Theatre in Ottawa, where Flagg, a patent expert with a sensitive soul, confronts profound sorrow. With the help of his friend Foyard, Flagg explores his memories to understand his grief, uncovering key figures like the business duo Barquette and Manivelle, and his love for the charismatic activist Blaireau. As Flagg reconstructs his life, unexpected characters disrupt his journey. Directed by Dillon Orr, this thought-provoking production, featuring stroboscopic lights and a smoky ambiance, immerses audiences in a tale of love, loss, and self-discovery.

Costumes by Neeko Paluzzi

PROOF 29 | JUNE-JULY 2023

Gallery 44, Toronto, ON

Proof is Gallery 44’s annual group exhibition of work by emerging Canadian artists, reflecting a range of current concerns and practices in contemporary photography and lens-based media.

“In Proof 29, artists Holly Chang, Christina Oyawale and Neeko Paluzzi present installations that place their photographic practices within expanded spatial and material contexts, as their work moves from intimate specificity into the sphere of collective meaning-making. These openings correlate also to the artists’ shared investment in the open-ended, the non-linear and the indeterminate…[The artists] deeply implicate themselves within their image-making methods, through ambient conditions of feeling, meditations on personal circumstance and veiled performance. In Proof 29, they allow us to join their working-through, offering the open invitation of the perpetually unresolved.” Excerpt from the essay process/processing by writer Talia Golland.

LE RENDU | MARCH - JUNE 2023

Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON

Curator: Rachelle Dickinson

Le rendu showcases the work of five University of Ottawa MFA graduates—Madeline Richards, Neeko Paluzzi, Maxime Boisvert-Huneault, Antoine O’Donoughue, and Joel Secter—whose practices flourished during their two-year program. This exhibition celebrates their rigorous artistic processes in their studio spaces and invites dialogue and curiosity. The title, chosen by the artists, reflects multiple meanings of "render," such as to express, interpret, or give back. The works explore critical subjectivity and reinterpret traditional representation methods through diverse media, layered narratives, and personal, theoretical, and historical frameworks. Le rendu is a collaborative exhibition that highlights the artists’ distinct practices and their shared relationships.

KARSH CONTINUUM | MARCH - APRIL 2022

City of Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON

2022 Karsh Continuum honours the artistic legacy of Yousuf and Malak Karsh while continuing an intergenerational chain of mentorship that fosters photo/lens-based innovation.

2019 Karsh Award laureate Andrew Wright selected emerging local artists Stéphane Alexis, Shelby Lisk and Neeko Paluzzi for this exhibition and mentorship opportunity: “All three artists engage with photography in an expanded sense. Recognizing both the utility and the limitations of photography’s established traditions and conceits, they continue to make poignant works where photography is an important yet constituent part of their significance.”

RE/FLEX | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2022

Patel-Brown Gallery, Toronto, ON

Re/flex examines the malleability of lens-based media, exploring how photographs, often seen as finite, contrast with the organic, fleeting nature of memory. The works in the exhibition question the role of memory in collective narratives and its translation into an object. Artists combine synthetic technologies like AI-generated media with traditional techniques such as staging and performance to challenge documentary objectivity. This reflexivity underscores that photographs are connected to their maker, audience, and context. Through these methods, Re/flex reveals the flaws and openness of the lens, showing how memory and identity are pliable and subject to new meanings.

Anique Jordan, Brendan George Ko, Zoe Koke, Paula McLean, Dainesha Nugent-Palache, Neeko Paluzzi, Kara Springer, Waard Ward in collaboration with Nicolas Fleming and Darren Rigo, Shellie Zhang

THE GREAT WORK/LE GRAND TRAVAIL | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2022

Galerie Art-Image Gallery, Gatineau, QC

Alchemy, once central to early science, aimed to transform base metals into gold and discover the elixir of life. In the Post-Renaissance period, it declined as philosophers and chemists turned to empirical research, laying the foundation for modern chemistry. This shift paralleled Copernicus and Kepler's work in separating religion from science. Art mirrors alchemy, as artists transform lesser materials into something greater. In The Great Work, Paluzzi directly engages with this act, creating seven metallic pieces that follow the seven classical stages of alchemical transmutation. Each steel plate is crafted through chemical conversion, layering metal onto metal in a process inspired by alchemical recipes.

THE LITTLE PRINCE | FEBRUARY - APRIL 2021

Galerie Art-Image Gallery, Gatineau, QC

In The little prince, Paluzzi’s body was 3D-scanned by 130 cameras, with the digital textures of his skin morphed into seven characters, inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s illustrations. The figures were then 3D-printed in sandstone and photographed in his studio. These characters reference the young boy’s journey in The little prince, where he learns that wisdom doesn’t come with age. Paluzzi, much older than the little prince, uses his body to narrate and control his story, creating doppelgängers to confront and categorize troubling aspects of his own reality. This manipulation emphasizes his dual role as both the unreliable narrator and the character in his own story.

IDEA.19 | MAY-JUNE 2019

Queen’s Square Gallery, Cambridge, ON

SHOW.19 brings together emerging artists from across Ontario whose works, processes and preoccupations are the latest in the ever-changing world of contemporary art. The exhibition is exclusively dedicated to those new on the scene and gives the necessary and well-deserved voice to the most ambitious and dedicated.

Selected from an open call for submissions, the 13 artists chosen for SHOW.19 shed light on what's happening today and what Ontario has to offer the world of contemporary art in the coming years.

Tommy Bourque, Nicole Crozier, Rosellen D'Agostino, Laura Demers, Ioana Dragomir, Sylvia Galbraith, Mélika Hashemi, Hilary Hung, Melanie Keay, Neeko Paluzzi, Michelle Peraza, Carrie Perreault, Tait Wilman

HOMUNCULUS, OR THE PLANETS SEEN FROM MY CHILDHOOD WINDOW | MAY 2019

Northern Contemporary Gallery, Toronto, ON

Featured Exhibition at the 2019 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

As a child, the artist dreamed of becoming an astronaut, spending hours exploring the universe with a viewmaster. Recently, while sleeping in their childhood bed, they felt the weight of unfulfilled expectations. HOMUNCULUS, or the planets seen through my childhood window is an installation that explores these feelings through photo-based work. Viewers can visit seven fictive planets via a classic viewmaster, each featuring variations of the artist’s 3D-scanned and printed body. The figures reference alchemical concepts and Le Petit Prince, where a boy explores the universe to understand coming-of-age. The artist's body and art serve as vessels for confronting and categorizing troubling aspects of their reality.

THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS | MAY 2019

Loop Gallery, Toronto, ON

The goldberg variations is a conceptual exploration where photography and music intersect. Drawing inspiration from J.S. Bach's compositions and Glenn Gould’s two distinct interpretations, this project emerged from the question: "Can photographic tones be matched with musical tones?" The work translates the mathematical equations in Bach’s music into photographic tones in the darkroom, creating a specific grey for each note on the piano, from black (low notes) to white (high notes). The 30 variations and two arias are divided visually by the speed of Gould's interpretations: the faster 1955 rendition is darker, while the slower 1982 version is lighter. This body of work reflects my exploration of language in art, where different forms—whether painting, photography, or music—serve as vessels to express similar themes through distinct vocabularies.

THIS PLACE IS A SHELTER | SEPTEMBER 2018

SPAO Centre Gallery, Ottawa, ON

This exhibition is the culmination of the 2017-18 Artist Residencies and features work created by the artists during their tenure at the SPAO Centre. d’Scarlett’s photo series Melt looks at the relationship between a queer couple while exploring the photographer’s own queer identity. Using experimental techniques, she blurs the boundaries of the two lovers’ bodies, depicting oneness, intimacy and connection. In This place is a shelter, Paluzzi has used darkroom equipment as a musical instrument to visualize a minimalist composition by Olafur Arnalds by creating exposures that match the tonality of the music, note for note. Presented together, the works by these two artists represent the range of experimentation and exploration offered by the residency.