November 5 to December 19, 2026

The public is invited to attend a special artist talk and reception on Saturday, November 21 at 1 PM at Gallery@501 (#120, 501 Festival Avenue). This event and admission to the gallery are free.

Strathcona County is pleased to present Salinlahi: Generations, a new exhibition by Toronto artist Ursula Handleigh and Edmonton artist Mary Escano. The exhibit opens at Gallery@501 on November 5, 2026, and shows until December 19, 2026. In Salinlahi: Generations, Handleigh and Escano draw from maternal histories, ancestral knowledge, photography, weaving, and material experimentation to create contemporary points of connection to Filipino culture. The artists work between memory and making, using research and intuition, revealing identity as an ongoing process of interpretation rather than recovery of maternal stories.

Ursula Handleigh is a Tkaronto Scarborough-born artist, curator and educator of Filipina/a/x mixed-ancestry working within expanded photography, moving image and alternative processes of image making. Inspired by conversations with her mother and journeys connecting her to family history in the Philippines, she uses photographic and textile-based processes to explore identity, memory and cultural inheritance.

Mary Escano is an emerging second-generation Filipina Canadian artist based in Treaty 6 Territory who examines pre-colonial art practices in the Philippines to better understand and connect to her heritage. As a second-generation Filipina Canadian artist, her practice explores intergenerational conflicts while demonstrating themes of familial relationships, identity, and Filipino culture through painting, sculpture, loom weaving and audio.

"Through reinterpreting Filipino cultural traditions such as woven mats (banig) and Binakol weaving, the artists invite visitors to explore how cultural identity is not simply inherited but continually redefined through lived experience," says Kris Miller, Gallery@501 Curator.