Image: Promotional graphic for the two exhibition openings on 17 September, pairing Jane Jin Kaisen, ‘Burial of This Order’ (still), 2022, with a Curtis Talwst Santiago diorama. Courtesy Contemporary Calgary, Calgary
Contemporary Calgary will open two solo exhibitions on Thursday 17 September 2026 with a public evening program running from 6 to 9 pm: Curtis Talwst Santiago: 'worlds, worlds, worlds' and Jane Jin Kaisen: 'Burial of This Order'. The opening marks the start of a new exhibition season at the Calgary institution, which says the program is being shaped by ideas of change and world-building across social, political, environmental and psychological life. The event is free and requires no registration.
The exhibition opening comes as Contemporary Calgary points to a landmark moment in its evolution, framed by the anticipated transformation of the Centennial Planetarium. In its announcement, the institution describes the season as bringing together prominent Canadian and international artists whose projects address a fraught historical moment in which ruptures and crises may lead to new possibilities and ever-evolving realities. The opening night begins with doors at 6 pm, remarks at 7 pm in the Atrium and gallery access until 9 pm.
'worlds, worlds, worlds' runs in the Flanagan Family Gallery from September 17, 2026, to January 3, 2027. Curated by Kanika Anand, the exhibition focuses on how stories are held and carried across history and memory, using world-building and critical fabulation as key frameworks. Contemporary Calgary says the show centers on Santiago’s dioramas, which began in 2008 and are collectively known as the Infinity Series.
According to the exhibition text, those small, handbuilt works move between personal memories of Caribbean community life and broader collective histories, including migration crises and territorialism. The presentation also places the dioramas within a scenography of transmission made of horns, pipes, channels and circuitry, and uses cardboard as a material that links containment, circulation and disposal. The artist’s practice is also described as extending beyond sculpture into painting, public art and film, while retaining a strong relationship to rhythm, resonance and interruption through his musical background.
'Burial of This Order' opens in the Morris & Ann Dancyger Observatory Gallery on September 3, 2026, and runs to January 10, 2027. Curated by Noa Bronstein, the exhibition brings together three works by Kaisen and emphasizes her ongoing interest in ritual, collectivity, capitalist critique and the possibilities of social and political transgression. The central work is a 2022 video installation that follows a funerary procession gathered to ceremonially bury a world order built on hierarchy and division.
Contemporary Calgary says the procession includes artists, poets and activists, and frames the ritual as a funeral without grievers, assembled to dismantle unlivable structures rather than simply lament them. The exhibition is accompanied by 'Sorrow Waters This Land' (2024) and 'Dokkaebi' (2024), with the former set at a derelict resort on Jeju Island that was abandoned after the IMF financial crisis of the 1990s and the latter drawing on Korean folklore through trickster deities that move through the procession. Kaisen, who was born on Jeju Island and lives in Copenhagen, is also noted for work concerning memory, migration and borders, and for representing Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale.
The two runs are listed differently by the institution: the Santiago show is dated from the 17 September opening, while the Kaisen listing gives 3 September 2026 to 10 January 2027 even though the opening announcement and its promotional graphic bill both exhibitions as opening on 17 September. Kanika Anand curated the Santiago exhibition and Noa Bronstein the Kaisen presentation.
