On view: March 10-April 7, 2026 

Reception: Wednesday, April 1, 2:00 pm-4:00 pm

Aide-Memoire brings together emerging artists to explore the notion of “archival silences,” specifically how gaps in a body of records might be interpreted in relation to marginalized lived experiences. The works investigate how these gaps can be an invitation to claim space and construct one’s own archive in the present.

Featuring recent sculpture work by Melanie Jones (UFV School of Creative Arts Associate Professor) alongside work by SoCA student artists and alumni Aiyana Barnett, Chandradeep Majumder, Gabriel Fiset, and Sien Tolmie.

This exhibit is connected to Jones’ larger sculpture practice, which is engaged with themes of identity, queer lived experience and an ongoing fascination with furniture and found objects. As queer bodies are attacked, policed, and legislated around the world, queer artists like Jones are forced to grapple with the prevailing historical record of their existence, including the frequent erasure of LGBTQIA+ voices and the validity of their lived identities.

In this collection of works, materiality, queerness and the subjective archive intersect in Jones’ work through a series of sculptures that deploy the drawer and other found objects as signifiers for memory. In these works, Jones centers the object-ness of the drawer itself, separate from the usual enclosing furniture, as an “aide-memoire” (translation: aid to memory). Drawers store and conceal objects and archival information, but can also be opened to reveal them, therefore occupying a liminal space between access and restriction – a transitional area between one state and another. Using wax, fur, text, ceramics and other materials, the drawer is deployed as a stand-in for the artist’s queer non-binary body, building a visceral archive of self-discovery.

The student artists were invited to respond to Jones’ research and themes through their own lived experiences, resulting in a series of individual and collaborative works that claim space for marginalized voicesby opposing the power and limitations of the traditional archive.

The exhibition opens on March 10 at the S’eliyemetaxwtexw Art Gallery, located on the UFV Abbotsford campus, and runs through until April 7.

A reception will be held on Wednesday, April 1, from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm in the gallery. All are welcome to attend, and admission is free.

For more information, contact SAG.Gallery@ufv.ca