What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 10am - 5pm Wednesday 10am - 5pm Thursday 10am - 5pm Friday 10am - 5pm Saturday 12pm - 5pm Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Home
Canada
Vancouver, BC
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Call Directions Website Contact the museum

Contemporary art gallery on the UBC Vancouver campus. Admission is free.

The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery’s mandate is to research, exhibit, collect, publish, educate and develop programs in the field of contemporary art and in contemporary approaches to the practice of art history and criticism.

10/07/2026

Tonight, join us!

LECTURE WITH NIZAN SHAKED
Wednesday, October 7 at 5:30 pm
Room 102, Lasserre Building, 6333 Memorial Road, UBC

On the occasion of the exhibition Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy, the Belkin and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC are pleased to present a public lecture by the prominent art historian Nizan Shaked.

In response to Sterbak’s art practice, Shaked will present her work on the “hyperbolic proposition,” which, following the thinking of Etienne Balibar, asks about the status of the (gendered) subject as citizen. It extends Shaked’s earlier analysis of the synthetic proposition in art, which examines the impact of cultural movements and identity politics on conceptualism and its legacies, as well as her new research on art that intervenes in state structures and legal frameworks by analyzing aesthetics, manipulating forms and applying strategies for change. By looking to how artists have developed modes of addressing political and social concerns in their work, Shaked’s writing provides meaningful entry points with which to engage Sterbak’s varied materials.

Nizan Shaked is the author of Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) and The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art (Manchester University Press, 2017). Her forthcoming book Art Against the System is supported by a 2024 Andy Warhol Art Writers Grant. Select writing has also appeared in the edited collections Adrian Piper: A Reader (MoMA, 2018), The Routledge Companion to African American Art History (2019), The Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History (2025) and The Routledge Companion to Art and Capitalism (Forthcoming July 2026). Shaked is Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum, and Curatorial Studies at California State University Long Beach.

We are grateful to the UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies for their support of this lecture.

Image: Jana Sterbak, Dicey, 2023. Courtesy of the artist

.ubc .ubc

10/06/2026

Tomorrow! Join us for a lecture with Nizan Shaked!

Wednesday, October 7 at 5:30 pm
Room 102, Lasserre Building, 6333 Memorial Road, UBC

On the occasion of the exhibition Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy, the Belkin and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC are pleased to present a public lecture by the prominent art historian Nizan Shaked.

In response to Sterbak’s art practice, Shaked will present her work on the “hyperbolic proposition,” which, following the thinking of Etienne Balibar, asks about the status of the (gendered) subject as citizen. It extends Shaked’s earlier analysis of the synthetic proposition in art, which examines the impact of cultural movements and identity politics on conceptualism and its legacies, as well as her new research on art that intervenes in state structures and legal frameworks by analyzing aesthetics, manipulating forms and applying strategies for change. By looking to how artists have developed modes of addressing political and social concerns in their work, Shaked’s writing provides meaningful entry points with which to engage Sterbak’s varied materials.

Nizan Shaked is the author of Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) and The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art (Manchester University Press, 2017). Her forthcoming book Art Against the System is supported by a 2024 Andy Warhol Art Writers Grant. Select writing has also appeared in the edited collections Adrian Piper: A Reader (MoMA, 2018), The Routledge Companion to African American Art History (2019), The Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History (2025) and The Routledge Companion to Art and Capitalism (Forthcoming July 2026). Shaked is Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum, and Curatorial Studies at California State University Long Beach.

We are grateful to the UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies for their support of this lecture.

Image: Jana Sterbak, Dicey, 2023. Courtesy of the artist

.ubc .ubc

10/05/2026

LECTURE WITH NIZAN SHAKED
Wednesday, October 7 at 5:30 pm
Room 102, Lasserre Building, 6333 Memorial Road, UBC

On the occasion of the exhibition Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy, the Belkin and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC are pleased to present a public lecture by the prominent art historian Nizan Shaked.

In response to Sterbak’s art practice, Shaked will present her work on the “hyperbolic proposition,” which, following the thinking of Etienne Balibar, asks about the status of the (gendered) subject as citizen. It extends Shaked’s earlier analysis of the synthetic proposition in art, which examines the impact of cultural movements and identity politics on conceptualism and its legacies, as well as her new research on art that intervenes in state structures and legal frameworks by analyzing aesthetics, manipulating forms and applying strategies for change. By looking to how artists have developed modes of addressing political and social concerns in their work, Shaked’s writing provides meaningful entry points with which to engage Sterbak’s varied materials.

Nizan Shaked is the author of Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) and The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art (Manchester University Press, 2017). Her forthcoming book Art Against the System is supported by a 2024 Andy Warhol Art Writers Grant. Select writing has also appeared in the edited collections Adrian Piper: A Reader (MoMA, 2018), The Routledge Companion to African American Art History (2019), The Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History (2025) and The Routledge Companion to Art and Capitalism (Forthcoming July 2026). Shaked is Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum, and Curatorial Studies at California State University Long Beach.

We are grateful to the UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies for their support of this lecture.

Image: Jana Sterbak, Dicey, 2023. Courtesy of the artist

.ubc .ubc

10/04/2026

Exhibition installation is seldom straightforward - for Dimensions of Intimacy, we worked with Golriz Rezvani to make the bread mattress required for Jana Sterbak's Bread Bed (2016/26). Rezvani worked with bread for her work in the 2026 MFA exhibition at the Belkin with amazing results, and we are grateful for her expertise for this exhibition. Thank you, Golriz!

Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy continues through Sunday, December 6.

Images: Golriz Rezvani with Jana Sterbak at the exhibition opening; Jana Sterbak, Bread Bed (and detail), 2016/26, photos by Rachel Topham Photography; Golriz Rezvani, Jessica Fletcher and Stephanie Gagne preparing the dough for the bread mattress

10/03/2026

Today, Saturday, at 1 pm, join us for Pegah Tabassinejad’s Game [here/there]: A Live Digital Performance at the Belkin.

1 pm Live digital video performance
2 pm Discussion

Pegah Tabassinejad’s live performances interrogate how digital and surveillance culture impacts identity, presence and the perception of female bodies in public and private space. Her expanded practice includes film, video, installation as well as performance, all of which are grounded in her theatre background. Within the context of Jana Sterbak’s exhibition Dimensions of Intimacy, the presentation of Tabassinejad’s work extends a consideration of external and internal modes of control around the (female) body in this cultural and political moment.

Tabassinejad’s Game [here/there] is a series of performances that tests the boundaries between surveillance and participatory agency, situating the body as both a site of control and a conduit for mediated interaction. Based on the structure of the video game, the artist shifts authority around the body to remote audiences to explore how digital spectatorship constructs, directs, and fragments embodied experience. These performances unfold in urban space, where the body (in this case, the artist’s body in Vancouver and another performer’s body in a different location) becomes an avatar, simultaneously autonomous and subject to external command in real-time by a remote audience in the gallery. Game [here/there] blurs the lines between agency and submission, presence and absence, reality and simulation to examine the infrastructures of power embedded within digital systems, questioning how virtual spectatorship reconfigures corporeal movement and spatial perception.

10/02/2026

Tomorrow, Saturday at 1 pm, join us for Pegah Tabassinejad’s Game [here/there]: A Live Digital Performance at the Belkin.

1 pm Live digital video performance
2 pm Discussion

Pegah Tabassinejad’s live performances interrogate how digital and surveillance culture impacts identity, presence and the perception of female bodies in public and private space. Her expanded practice includes film, video, installation as well as performance, all of which are grounded in her theatre background. Within the context of Jana Sterbak’s exhibition Dimensions of Intimacy, the presentation of Tabassinejad’s work extends a consideration of external and internal modes of control around the (female) body in this cultural and political moment.

Tabassinejad’s Game [here/there] is a series of performances that tests the boundaries between surveillance and participatory agency, situating the body as both a site of control and a conduit for mediated interaction. Based on the structure of the video game, the artist shifts authority around the body to remote audiences to explore how digital spectatorship constructs, directs, and fragments embodied experience. These performances unfold in urban space, where the body (in this case, the artist’s body in Vancouver and another performer’s body in a different location) becomes an avatar, simultaneously autonomous and subject to external command in real-time by a remote audience in the gallery. Game [here/there] blurs the lines between agency and submission, presence and absence, reality and simulation to examine the infrastructures of power embedded within digital systems, questioning how virtual spectatorship reconfigures corporeal movement and spatial perception.

09/30/2026

The Belkin is closed today, September 30, in recognition of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

In 2023, təlnaq̕ə (Alec Guerin) created this design for Orange Shirt Day, a day to recognize and commemorate the ongoing impacts of Canada’s Residential School system, to honour its survivors and intergenerational survivors and to remember those who didn’t return home. Guerin speaks about his artwork and its inception:

“The idea behind the design is to represent how the impacts of colonization and Residential Schools is not a local issue or even a regional issue. It’s a global issue. A big piece of what Residential Schools tried to do was disconnect us from who we are and where we come from and that’s something that is still ongoing today. For example, a young Indigenous person is expected to go to a public high school. And that high school has a curriculum that’s interchangeable with basically any high school in the province. So, there isn’t that connection of contextualizing who you are and where you are in the world. I wanted to represent the importance of that by portraying the land as animals. And when I was having to prioritize how I was making that portrayal, I did end up having to pare it down to what I thought were the two most important parts. Which is the Musqueam and UBC relationship, so a Thunderbird and a fish. I asked, ‘What really makes a Thunderbird, what do you see in Musqueam designs about the salmon that are important to reflect?’ and really spent time on each animal specifically before laying them out. I used a reference of the globe to add some negative space representing the other land masses.”

təlnaq̕ə (Alec Guerin) is a Musqueam artist specializing in filmmaking, woodworking, tinkering and aerial photography. With a background in digital art and a focus on visual effects and CGI, Guerin explores themes of mental health, obsession, loss and the power of community in his work. Guerin draws inspiration from the realms of language and cultural preservation and revitalization.

09/29/2026

Performance with Pegah Tabassinejad
Saturday, October 3 at 1 pm

Join us for Pegah Tabassinejad’s Game [here/there]: A Live Digital Performance on Saturday, October 3 at the Belkin.

1 pm Live digital video performance
2 pm Discussion

Pegah Tabassinejad’s live performances interrogate how digital and surveillance culture impacts identity, presence and the perception of female bodies in public and private space. Her expanded practice includes film, video, installation as well as performance, all of which are grounded in her theatre background. Within the context of Jana Sterbak’s exhibition Dimensions of Intimacy, the presentation of Tabassinejad’s work extends a consideration of external and internal modes of control around the (female) body in this cultural and political moment.

Tabassinejad’s Game [here/there] is a series of performances that tests the boundaries between surveillance and participatory agency, situating the body as both a site of control and a conduit for mediated interaction. Based on the structure of the video game, the artist shifts authority around the body to remote audiences to explore how digital spectatorship constructs, directs, and fragments embodied experience. These performances unfold in urban space, where the body (in this case, the artist’s body in Vancouver and another performer’s body in a different location) becomes an avatar, simultaneously autonomous and subject to external command in real-time by a remote audience in the gallery. Game [here/there] blurs the lines between agency and submission, presence and absence, reality and simulation to examine the infrastructures of power embedded within digital systems, questioning how virtual spectatorship reconfigures corporeal movement and spatial perception.

Address

The University Of British Columbia, 1825 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC
V6T1Z2

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 5pm
Friday	10am - 5pm
Saturday	12pm - 5pm
Sunday	12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+16048222759

Website

http://www.belkin.ubc.ca/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery:

Want your museum to be the top-listed museum in Vancouver?