imperfecta.

On view October 1-31, 2026, Absurdity amused and other tall tales features Canadian artist Julie Liger-Belair, who created collage to make sense of the absurdity that surrounds us – taking fragments from different places and different times, forcing them into new relationships and novel contexts to tell a different story.

The artworks in this show exist somewhere between the playful and the disturbing, the beautiful and the grotesque, the ridiculous and the horrifying. They are a response to a world that increasingly feels like the stuff of folk tales and horror: a world in which the improbable has become ordinary and reason often seems to have been replaced by spectacle and absurdity.

Liger-Belair has always been drawn to fairy tales and folk tales because they are often how we make sense of things we cannot otherwise understand. They are strange, brutal, moralistic stories filled with monsters, impossible transformations, foolish kings, cruelty, and terrible things people do to one another – there is never anything particularly subtle about them, but beneath their absurdity is an attempt to give shape to fear, injustice, and the inexplicable.

"Lately, the distinction between those stories and real life has begun to feel increasingly unstable. I read the news and sometimes have the peculiar feeling that I have wandered into a particularly dark folk tale. The things people are saying and doing seem so grotesque and improbable that it can be difficult to believe they are actually part of our lived reality. At the same time, we seem determined to amuse and entertain ourselves to oblivion—perhaps it is simply human nature. Either way, there is something deeply absurd about it, and it makes these old stories feel increasingly relevant," the artist explains.

About the artist

Julie attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Canada (now OCAD University) where she studied printmaking, photography, illustration and metalsmithing. This interdisciplinary focus guided her to mixed media art in an attempt to combine these different disciplines in a coherent body of work. For 20 years, Julie has been making collage and assemblage work often featuring vintage photos, finding that these, in of themselves, evoke imagined histories and feelings of nostalgia.