Nour Mobarak

Nour Mobarak’s practice gives unexpected form to a career-long concern with the conditions of being. In work spanning sculpture, sound, performance, and moving image, the artist considers the ways that systems — physical, political and otherwise — form, entangle and mutate over time. She frequently draws on the principles of avant-garde music and poetry in her works, engaging questions of voice, knowledge, and inheritance through strategies such as rhythm, improvisation and self-imposed parameters. Her unconventional use of materials such as mycelium and resin extends directly from these impulses, embodying an interest in both discovering a material’s physical properties through making and allowing its idiosyncratic behaviours to shape her work in surprising ways.

In *Bubonic Mnemonic*, Mobarak turns her attention to the body as both system and carrier — a visceral technology and humanity’s earliest archive. With a longstanding interest in oral cultures, where memorized tropes and motifs have often served as mnemonics to carry knowledge, she reflects here on the role of the cliché in cognition. Working with familiar images, familial connections, as well as her own form — casts of her pregnant torso, impressions of her buttocks, a video of her vocal cords — she asks how knowledge takes form and is stored, how memory is drawn and redrawn by time, circumstance and lineage.

### Biography
Nour Mobarak (b. 1985, Cairo, Egypt) lives and works between Bainbridge Island, WA and Athens, Greece. Her recent presentations include the 2026 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2026 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia; WIELS, Brussels (2025); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2025); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2024-25); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Art Contemporanea, Turin (2024), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2023); California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2024); and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2022). Her performances have been staged at venues such as the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2020), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019), LAXART, Los Angeles (2019), Stadslimeit, Antwerp (2016), and Cambridge University, UK (2010), amongst many others.

Artwork by Nour Mobarak made of bright yellow and dark red resin poured into a clear rectangular frame.

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Bubonic Mnemonic

Leslie Thornton

For more than five decades, Leslie Thornton has cultivated an artistic practice anchored in time, working fluidly across film, video and installation. Combining her own camerawork with a range of archival media, Thornton is known for bringing a disparate array of styles, techniques and references into a synchronous whole, exploring themes spanning the anxiety of conflict, the culture of science, and the space between thought and language.

At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Thornton presents *Peggy and Fred in Hell: Folding* (1983-2015), the final iteration of her serial work filmed and edited over the course of thirty years. The film follows two children wandering through a strange landscape marked by the detritus of television, popular culture and industrialization, an uncertain place tempered by Thornton’s own Cold War childhood. 

Operating as a bridge between late 20th-century anxieties and the contemporary explosion of information technologies, the work turns a critical eye to technology’s potential to outpace human comprehension and control. In the fiction of the film, where Peggy and Fred appear to be raised solely by television, their invented world deteriorates into a disjointed data field, nodding to the ways that language, knowledge and culture are fractured and restructured in a rapidly changing world.

### Biography
Leslie Thornton (b. 1951, Tennessee) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions and screenings include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Lightcone, Paris; MoMA, New York; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Tate Modern, London; Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nürnberg; Malmö Konsthall, Malmö and Secession, Vienna. Her work is held in numerous public collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Harvard University, Cambridge; Museum of Modern Art, New York; School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; and Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Thornton trained at MIT (1976) and at Harvard University (1974). She holds an MFA from The Hartford Art School (1976), a BFA from SUNY Buffalo, (1973), and was a mathematics major at Tufts University (1969–1971).

Black and white still from Peggy & Fred In Hell showing a young boy in a white coat looking at a pile of objects in the foreground.

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Peggy & Fred in Hell

We’re working on our [upcoming exhibitions](/exhibitions-and-events/upcoming), opening on November 12. [Visit our archive](/exhibitions-and-events/archive/all) to see past exhibitions and events.

Closed for installation

Please join us to celebrate the opening of CAG's fall 2026 exhibitions: [*Nour Mobarak: Bubonic Mnemonic*](/exhibition/nour-mobarak) and [*Leslie Thornton: Peggy & Fred in Hell*](/exhibition/leslie-thornton).

All ages welcome. Cash bar.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

Black and white still from Peggy & Fred In Hell showing a young girl looking to the right in front of fire-works-like streaks of light.

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Fall 2026

Opening Reception

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cag-in-conversation-nour-mobarak-matthew-hyland-tickets-2004391580173 "button")

Please join us for a talk at the gallery between Nour Mobarak and CAG's Executive Director Matthew Hyland on the occasion of Mobarak's exhibition *Bubonic Mnemonic*.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged. Secure your place on [Eventbrite](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cag-in-conversation-nour-mobarak-matthew-hyland-tickets-2004391580173).

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### Biography
Nour Mobarak (b. 1985, Cairo, Egypt) lives and works between Bainbridge Island, WA and Athens, Greece. Her recent presentations include the 2026 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2026 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia; WIELS, Brussels (2025); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2025); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2024-25); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Art Contemporanea, Turin (2024), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2023); California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2024); and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2022). Her performances have been staged at venues such as the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2020), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019), LAXART, Los Angeles (2019), Stadslimeit, Antwerp (2016), and Cambridge University, UK (2010), amongst many others.

A portrait of Nour Mobarak standing at a mirrored table with her hands resting on a mushroom sculpture. She has long wavy brown hair with bleached ends, and her reflection can be seen in the mirrored table. 

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Nour Mobarak & Matthew Hyland

In Conversation

Join CAG’s Assistant Curator Aretha Pereira for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions, *Nour Mobarak: Bubonic Mnemonic* and *Leslie Thornton: Peggy & Fred in Hell*.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.


Black and white still from Peggy & Fred In Hell of a cluttered interior with a chair and a desk. A grid overlays the entire image.

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with Aretha Pereira

Curatorial Tour

Sadia Shirazi

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In December, we welcome Sadia Shirazi to speak on the work of Nour Mobarak.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Sadia Shirazi is a writer, curator and scholar. Shirazi’s criticism, essays, and interviews have been published in *e-flux*, *Frieze*, *Artforum*, *Bidoun*, and *C Magazine*, and they have contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues, monographs, edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals. Previously a curator of international art at the Tate Modern, Shirazi is currently assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia.

A black and white portrait of Sadia Shirazi, a person with long dark curly hair in a dark blouse and trousers, seated and looking to the right with their hands folded across their lap.

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Sadia Shirazi on Nour Mobarak

Saturday Session

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In February, we welcome Susan Gibb to speak on the work of Nour Mobarak and Leslie Thornton.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Susan Gibb is the Executive and Artistic Director of Western Front, a Vancouver-based artist-run centre dedicated to the development and presentation of multidisciplinary artistic practices. Her curatorial practice is grounded in a commitment to experimental artistic work across disciplines, with extensive experience developing and presenting projects internationally across performance, moving image, visual art, and publishing.
Previously, she was a curator at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution in Amsterdam, where she developed long-term commissions and collaborations with artists and institutional partners internationally. In Sydney, she held curatorial positions at Carriageworks and Campbelltown Arts Centre, and founded the independent curatorial initiative Society. She has also taught curating and performance at the Dutch Art Institute and the School for New Dance Development in the Netherlands.

Portrait of Susan Gibb in all black with a brunette bob leaning against a wall looking into camera.

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Susan Gibb on Nour Mobarak & Leslie Thornton

Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In March, we welcome Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill to speak on the work of Nour Mobarak.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill is an artist and writer. Her practice explores the history of found materials to enquire into concepts of land, property, and economy. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston; SITE Santa Fe; Mercer Union, Toronto; the National Gallery of Canada; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Hessel Museum CCS Bard; the 59th Venice Biennale; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is a member of BUSH gallery, an Indigenous artist collective that seeks to challenge Eurocentric art models, and to centre the land and Indigenous epistemologies. Hill is Cree and English, with maternal roots in the Michel Band and Papaschase. She lives on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm and səlilwətaɬ Nations.

Portrait of Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill in a red button-up and purple shorts with her hands in her pockets.

Exhibitions

Talks & Events