Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada—March 23, 2026: On March 26, 2026, the MacKenzie Art Gallery is set to open Maia Stark: Strange Dark Memory, Saskatoon-based artist Maia Stark’s first major solo exhibition. 

In Strange Dark Memory, Stark explores the figure of the double—such as twins, doppelgangers, and mirrored selves—as mythological symbols. Drawing on her Icelandic, Irish, and Scottish heritage, the artist references European folktales and fairytales to explore her personal experience as a twin. Doubling offers companionship while also threatening individuality—a conceptual tension that informs all her work.    

Like traditional fairytales, Stark’s ceramic sculptures use magical realism to explore dark or difficult subject matter such as disease and death. She engages symbolism such as shapeshifting animals and doubles to examine different representations of the Self. In many folktales, twins can be both harbingers of death and stand-ins for the immortality of the soul.
 

“Across my practice, melancholia, violence, and care exist side by side,” explains Stark. “Folk narratives allow me to approach fear obliquely, using symbolic distance to engage with deeply personal anxieties around illness, selfhood, and loss. Through this lens, my work invites viewers into a reflective space where the body is unstable, identity is shared and fractured, and the double functions as both companion and omen.” 

In Stark’s paintings, human and animal subjects, always doubled, are depicted in isolated and intimate forest scenes, often linked to one another through vein-like tendrils or physical touch. Throughout all Stark’s work, the physical body is constantly in transition, a symptom of the uncanny experience of dissociation that happens as physical bodies shift during an illness, as well as the imperfect reflection of one’s own body through the experience of being a twin.  

Stark’s mysterious and poetic world operates as a space for healing and protection. Through her use of folkloric symbolism, Maia Stark’s work invites viewers into a reflective space where the self is not a fixed or stable site. The exhibition invites viewers to explore the artist’s world in search of their own double or fairytale. 

The public is invited to attend the opening event for Strange Dark Memory on Thursday, March 26, at 7 PM. 

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST  

Maia Stark graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Saskatchewan in 2015. Stark’s ongoing interest in body politics led to various research outlets; eventually focusing on concepts of the Grotesque and the Uncanny, specifically as these concepts are explored in folktales and fairytales. The artist draws on personal memories as well as her Icelandic, Irish, & Scottish heritage to form imagery in her paintings, drawings, and ceramic work. Stark’s works often portray a duplicated figure, a sort of self-portrait, pulling from her experience as an identical twin to contextualize her ongoing exploration of narrative and myth. 

 

ABOUT THE MACKENZIE  

Located in Treaty 4 territory, the MacKenzie Art Gallery is Saskatchewan’s oldest public art gallery, with a fifty-year history of championing Indigenous art from Indigenous perspectives. The MacKenzie embraces its unique position within the Canadian and international art landscape, celebrating the diverse perspectives of all artists within the Plains region and Canada. It has a focus on Indigenous and contemporary art, contextualized through select historic and international work. 

  

MEDIA CONTACT 

Allison Weed
Communications Manager
MacKenzie Art Gallery
aweed@mackenzie.art 

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