Ed Pien: Present: Past / Future

Present: Past / Future is an evolving multimedia installation by artist Ed Pien that considers temporality as a lived, unstable, and relational condition. Developed through a long-term collaboration with the same group of elders in San Agustín, Cuba, the project brings together video portraits, photography, exchanged personal objects, and sculptural furniture assemblages to produce an immersive environment in which memory, aging, and presence unfold across multiple registers. Working slowly and recursively since 2014, Pien has returned to the participants over time, allowing the work to be shaped by duration, trust, repetition, and loss. The installation resists linear narrative in favour of a spatial and emotional layering of lives, gestures, interiors, and recollections. Set against the material pressures of contemporary Cuba, the exhibition does not reduce its participants to documents of crisis; rather, it insists on their dignity, subjectivity, and continuing presence. Organized and circulated by Elegoa Cultural Productions the exhibition is accompanied by a trilingual publication in English, French, and Spanish, produced by the artist, Elegoa Cultural Productions, and Le Centre Sagamie, Montréal, with support host institutions as well as Birch Contemporary, Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, and private donor Carlos Yep.

Opening Reception for Ed Pien: Present: Past/Future 7 May 2026, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, 7 May, from 6:00–8:00 pm. The program begins at 6:30 pm in the Dalhousie Arts Centre Sculpture Court and will include remarks by Dr. Isaac Saney, Professor at Dalhousie University; a special musical performance by violinists Alison Enríquez and Irain Herrera Quirós; and a talk and exhibition tour with artist Ed Pien and curators Pamela Edmonds and Catherine Sicot. Refreshments provided by La Casita Kitchen.

The exhibition is organized and circulated by Elegoa Cultural Productions.