Jennifer Carvalho: An Archive of Gestures

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Photo credit: LFdocumentation

Jennifer Carvalho Postcard - 8

(“An archive of gestures (enclosed garden)”, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Franz Kaka, Toronto.)

CICA Vancouver is honored to present "An Archive of Gestures," by Canadian artist Jennifer Carvalho. On view from June 27 to August 10, 2025, the exhibition invites visitors to explore a space where time folds in on itself and echoes of the past linger in the present.

Jennifer Carvalho (b.1980) is a contemporary Canadian artist whose practice centers on reconstructing the past in the present. By reframing artworks from the Renaissance and medieval eras, she brings historical occurrences into contemporary focus—paying close

attention to bodily gestures, architecture, jewelry, and garments. Her work is deeply research-based, often deconstructing inherited notions of femininity through painting, challenging the ways women were historically represented in art. Carvalho combs through history to trace ideas back to their origins and rearticulates them in a contemporary context. Her influences include the writings of Mark Fisher and Silvia Federici, and the works of artists such as Jan van Eyck, Piero della Francesca, Agnolo Bronzino, and Giotto.

In An Archive of Gestures, Carvalho composes a requiem for a future that never arrives. Through cinematic framings of hand gestures, weeping faces, Renaissance gardens, ancient masks, jewels, and garments, she transports the viewer to a past echoed in the now—and to a future that remains out of reach. As Mark Fisher writes in Hauntology, Lost Futures, and Depression, art after modernism emerges as a layering of fragments from art created in the past. Carvalho embraces this condition with intention, blending historical imagery into new compositions that guide the viewer’s attention toward fragments she finds continue to resonate. The result is a series of intimate close-ups: gestures and visual remnants reimagined through the artist’s lens.

An Archive of Gestures conjures ghosts of the past that haunt both our present and our elusive future. The weeping women in this exhibition are its most potent symbols of hauntology—they form the chorus of this visual requiem. The exhibition invites a fluid exchange between viewer and subject: are we mourning a past we never experienced, or are these figures grieving our present and the future that will never come? This show becomes an intimate dialogue between the artist, the audience, and the painted histories that continue to shape our perceptions of time, history, and identity.

About the Artist

Jennifer Carvalho graduated from University of Guelph in 2013. Recent exhibitions include Helena Anrather, New York; Franz Kaka, Toronto; Palmer Gallery, London; WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong; Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal; and The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. In 2020 Carvalho was an artist in residence at The Banff Centre, Banff, AB. Carvalho has been awarded numerous prizes including Toronto Arts Council Visual Artist Program, Toronto Arts Council; Research and Creation Grant, Canada Council for the Arts; and The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. Carvalho is in the public collection of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, ON. Carvalho lives and works in Toronto.

RSVP for the opening reception on June 26, 5-8 PM

Artist Talk | June 28, 2 - 4 PM

Join us for an artist talk with Jennifer Carvalho as she offers insight into her research-driven practice and the imagery she draws from Renaissance and medieval art. Carvalho will explore how historical representations—particularly of women—continue to shape contemporary consciousness, and share the conceptual and visual strategies behind her work. Through cinematic framings of weeping faces, hand gestures, ancient masks, and symbolic objects, her paintings trace the lingering presence of the past and the emotional weight of futures that never arrived. This talk is a special opportunity to hear Carvalho reflect on the making of An Archive of Gestures, and the influence of hauntology, memory, and lost futures on the exhibition. A Q&A session will follow.

This event will be free with general admission to the Gallery. CICA Circle Members enjoy this event for free. RSVP is required via Eventbrite.  

This exhibition is made possible by the unwavering support of Franz Kaka Gallery.