This essay complements the exhibition Over and Over Again, on view at the Jackman Humanities Institute from September 16, 2026 to June 17, 2027. Curated by Ava Clarke, the exhibition is presented by the Art Museum in conjunction with the Jackman Humanities Institute’s 2026–27 research theme Doubles, Doppelgängers. Click here for details on how to visit the exhibition.

Repetition permeates all aspects of our existence on Earth. Stories and myths are reinterpreted and retold, artistic traditions are passed down through generations, the organic world cycles constantly through life and death. In poetry and music, the repetitive weaving of language and sound is pleasant and magnetizing. American poet Mary Oliver wrote about repetition, patterns, and rhythm extensively, affirming that “rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it becomes reliable, we are in kind of body-heaven.”¹ In this sense, familiarity and predictability are a comfortable knowing. In French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of repetition, no iteration is a perfect reproduction. Because meaning and context are perpetually in flux, no replica can be identical to its original.² In essence, the universe and our bodies exist and move in relation to one another, meaning every combination of a repetition is potentialized. But what happens when a pattern is broken?Over and Over Again seeks to confront the extensive, imposed, and systemic disruptions to the natural environment and cultural traditions while underscoring the simultaneous acts of continuity and voluntary disorder that converge in opposition. Can something new emerge from the rubble of change?

Featuring the art of Carol-Ann Apilado, Kuh Del Rosario, Sukaina Kubba, and Esmelyn Miranda Orozco, Over and Over Again brings together works that use abstract interpretations of weaving to tell stories and transmit ideas. Connected by their mutual understanding of people, objects, and ways of life separated by history and distance, each artist reckons with futures that honour tradition while exploring new understandings of space and time. The artworks featured in the exhibition are created from materials that toe the line between natural and synthetic: recycled plastics that act as raw materials, organic matter that performs like plastic, and synthetic textiles that mimic natural fibres.

Over and Over Again opens in the central seating area of the Jackman Humanities Institute with sculptures by Kuh Del Rosario in conversation with 3D PLA filament tracings by Sukaina Kubba. Amidst the perpetual endings and beginnings occurring in the natural world and the steady accumulation of plastics, Del Rosario’s sculptures are imbued with life and reach willingly toward the mortality of decomposition and decay. Composed of materials such as studio sweepings, organic matter, and recycled plastic, Galing sa Loob (From Inside), The Whorl Tells Tales, and Nestling Folds are themselves ecosystems. A throughline material in Del Rosario’s practice is hand-twined recycled plastics. She twists the material as an embodied, repetitive motion, as if they were natural fibres. The abundance of soft plastics and packaging materials has led Del Rosario to consider them as a new raw material, reflecting the reality that even when we are surrounded by nature, we are wrapped up in plastic. Del Rosario’s sculptures, with their endearing humanoid nature and fleeting form, entangled with the discards of industry, engage affection and ask to be cared for.

Alongside Del Rosario’s sculptures are Corners of Your Sky,  Achernar and Enclave Exclave by Sukaina Kubba. Through repetition, tracing, and copying with a 3D PLA filament pen, Kubba creates objects that blur the boundaries between drawing, sculpting, and weaving. Emulating a Kurdish rug from Senneh, Iran, Corners of Your Sky, Achernar considers the cross-cultural histories, stories of trade and migration, and personal memories attached to textiles. Existing now as a series of fractured narrative vignettes, Enclave Exclave is a collection of 3D PLA filament tracings of a Persian rug that has been in Kubba’s family for generations. Kubba’s research and artistic practice simultaneously recognize rugs as high-value commodities, historic and culturally significant artifacts, and personal heirlooms that carry stories and memory. Typically working from photographs, Kubba meticulously traces each unique quality and imperfection in the original textile, intentionally recording wear and tear and the labour of its maker. From object to photograph to contemporary artwork, each translation introduces slight distortions, like trying to retell a story or retrace a memory. Refusing to be fixed, with every repetition something may be lost or obscured, but perhaps added or re-imagined as well.

In both the large boardroom and the small meeting room of the JHI, facing one another are series of weavings by Carol-Ann Apilado and Esmelyn Miranda Orozco. Coming into conversation for the first time, the artists’ practices have material and thematic resonances. Embracing uncertainty, Apilado intentionally interrupts the repetitive techniques and patterns of Ilokano weaving, allowing irregularities and imperfections to emerge. Glitches reflects moments of chaos in a world marked by the ideals of perfection and challenges the rigid grid of traditional weaving. In Milagrosa, Apilado disassembles and reweaves a jasmine rice bag as a reflection on memory, migration, and belonging. The artist chose a bag from a Thai rice brand, Milagrosa, that her family has been cooking with for the past three decades in Canada. In Filipino cuisine and agriculture, rice is central, and to Apilado it symbolizes nourishment and care. The act of unraveling and reimagining the rice bag mirrors the disruption, adaptation, and transformation that generations of Filipino families have experienced as they have rebuilt their lives in new countries. Glitches thematizes tradition amidst change, and Milagrosa explores how food intersects with community, ancestry, and identity. 

In his series Materia flexible, Esmelyn Miranda Orozco draws inspiration from the mundane as he reconfigures and weaves found objects into textiles. Miranda Orozco collected sacks used to transport and distribute food during the crisis in Venezuela, which were later used as containers to carry belongings during migration. He carefully takes the sacks apart and reweaves them into new objects that represent both disruption and the unifying nature of essential needs. Inspired by the Modernist era of the 50s and 60s in Venezuela, he reweaves geometric shapes, alluding to this time of false prosperity which laid the groundwork for the sociopolitical crisis the country currently faces. The use of plastic in his work also refers to the connection of the oil market to the Modernist boom, linking industrial timelines through weaving.

The interruption of a repetition can be jarring. At a minimum, it subverts expectations; at a higher intensity, disruption can dismantle entire ways of life. With each repetition comes distortion and alteration. Sometimes a pattern-breaking shift goes unrecognized until it has led to a complete transformation. Other times, a pattern is forcefully interrupted, leaving no choice but to adjust and diverge. Through a clash of natural and synthetic materials, Over and Over Again transmits memory and history through abstract interpretations of weaving, confronting a future fractured and reshaped by change.

Endnotes

¹ Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994), 42.

² Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 70.

Credits

Banner Image: Esmelyn Miranda Orozco, Sin Titulo, de la serie: Materia flexible (detail), 2026. Woven polypropylene bags, 34 x 27 in. Photo courtesy of mimo.

About

Ava Clarke (b. 2000) is a curator and researcher from New Brunswick, currently based in Toronto, Ontario. She is a MVS Curatorial Studies student at the University of Toronto and holds a BA in History from Acadia University and a MA in History from Dalhousie University. Her curatorial research is informed by her experience as a historian and explores contemporary art as an alternative tool for re-evaluating how history is constructed, preserved, and shared. She is interested in re-interpreting and challenging museum structures and dominant historical narratives, while simultaneously creating space to imagine a transformative and expansive future.