Russna Kaur’s paintings engulf and disorient. They extend beyond the canvas—cascading across walls, slicing through corners, and redefining space with sculptural urgency. In Been there twice, haven’t got there yet (the space behind a thin screen, and prying eyes), Kaur builds an immersive environment that invites visitors to move around and through her work, rethinking painting as both surface and structure.

This exhibition marks a return. Raised in Brampton, Ontario, Kaur has been living and working in Vancouver for eight years and is finding her way back to Ontario this year. Her work carries a vibrant and uncontainable energy rooted in both places. The AGB’s 5,000-square-foot gallery—with its soaring 22-foot ceilings—offers her the freedom to expand, to play, and to stretch both her materials and her imagination. It’s a space befitting the ambition and scale of her practice, where canvases bleed into the room and paintings become architecture. In many ways, this exhibition can be read as a kind of funhouse—one built from memory, emotion, and pigment. Visitors may lose themselves in the vibrant blocks of colour, the “stitched” lines, and jagged edges. They are invited to enter a world where nothing is stable, where even the walls can shift. This is the uncontainable vision of Russna Kaur—a painter who refuses to be confined by the canvas, or by history.

The exhibition spans works from 2019 to her latest pieces created at the Annandale Artist Residency in PEI. Here, Kaur introduces new movement into her practice, offering angled views and sculptural constructions that expose the back of the painting—inviting us to witness the labour of making. She layers wood panels, bridal mesh, canvas, and aluminum into compositions that, in her words, “shift, swap, and grow—like puzzle pieces that never fully click into place.” They revel in imperfection and material play, embracing the messy realities of identity, memory, and connection.

Kaur’s work aligns with the AGB’s commitment to presenting contemporary artists whose practices are deeply rooted in craft traditions and materials. Central to the gallery’s mission is emphasizing the evolving, transdisciplinary nature of material culture—how craft’s technologies, histories, and tactile processes continue to influence and inform contemporary art. Kaur’s paintings exemplify this intersection: imbued with the textures and references of textiles, and composed of hand-blended pigments made from sand, rice flour, dried flower petals, sawdust, and soil, her work transforms materials into layered, resonant surfaces. They are rooted in familial memory and sensory experience: the stitching of silk saris from her mother’s bridal boutique, the thrill of festivals, the visual noise of religious spaces.

Yet Kaur’s colour is never just celebratory—it conceals as much as it reveals. Her surfaces shimmer with joy but also disguise grief, dislocation, and the complexities of cultural negotiation. Her works are as much about concealment as disclosure—layered, abstract façades that draw viewers in, then destabilize their footing.

“This exhibition is about façades—what they hide, what they hold, and what slips through,” Kaur writes. “I’m drawn to illusions and the instability of appearances. Bright colours may appear playful—like confetti suspended in air—but can just as easily fall into chaos: trampled, smudged, and dull.” Her work is immersive and overwhelming, but always grounded in humble materials. Beneath the surface lies rupture, tension, and the possibility of emergence.

We are proud to present Kaur’s new works—saturated with memory, stitched with contradiction, and radiant with a deeply personal power. The exhibition also includes two commissioned texts: a critical essay by artist-scholar Ara Osterweil, who positions Kaur’s work within abstraction and resistance, and a personal reflection by chef and activist Joshna Maharaj, drawing parallels between food, memory, and the visual language of Kaur’s compositions.

This exhibition came to life through the vision and dedication of AGB’s Associate Curator, Jasmine Mander, whose insight and enthusiasm brought Kaur’s work to Burlington. Mander shaped the show in meaningful ways, and we are deeply thankful for her spirited support of Kaur’s practice and the warmth and passion she brought to the process.

The Art Gallery of Burlington is supported by the City of Burlington, Ontario Arts Council, and Ontario Trillium Foundation. The AGB’s learning programming has been sponsored by the Joyce Family Foundation, the Burlington Foundation, and the incite Foundation for the Arts. The 50th Anniversary Exhibitions have been sponsored by the J.P. Bickell Foundation.