Things I Can Fold, Deflate, and Break
January 17–April 26, 2026
Art Gallery of Burlington (AGB) is pleased to announce the exhibition Things I Can Fold, Deflate, and Break by Roda Medhat, opening January 17, 2026, and running until April 26, 2026. The public opening reception will take place at the AGB on Saturday, January 17 from 1–3pm.
“When you find different materials, you want to tell different stories.” With this deceptively simple assertion, Markham-based, Kurdish-born artist Roda Medhat situates material not merely as a medium but a narrative engine. Roda’s work operates in the fertile space where craft, memory, and digital fabrication intersect, and where materials such as soft wool, buoyant inflatable vinyl, and glowing neon each carry their own cultural meanings. The Art Gallery of Burlington’s (AGB) winter 2026 season marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in a public institution, offering a sensory playground where textiles and sculptures act as storytellers.
As someone who migrated between cultures at a young age, Roda’s practice emerged from the intersections of generation and place. Roda is interested in how diasporic memory operates, how war and media spectacle shape collective memory, and how to reclaim erased or overlooked narratives by folding, deflating, and breaking them. Roda draws from a constellation of sources including archival texts and children’s stories, vernacular architecture, and the geometric language of West Asian and Kurdish textiles. In this way, his works become speculative archives, weaving forgotten or oversimplified histories into forms that are pliant, luminous, and resolutely alive.
Things I Can Fold, Deflate, and Break splits the gallery in thirds, diving into distinct modes of light, sound and movement, resulting in a unified environment in which material and narrative coexist and merge through one another. Flickering lights, low hums from inflatable fans, and tactile shifts from wool to plastic produce a multisensory choreography that guides the viewer through Roda’s world.
The exhibition title, simple and playful, serves as a reflection of how the space itself changed with Roda’s work through gestures of folding, deflating / inflating, and bending materials that extend beyond physical manipulation to mirror the ways he reshapes narrative itself. Through repositioning source material, teasing apart small elements and details, Roda allows stories to fold into one another (both materially and metaphorically), braiding their meanings back again into the larger plot.
Roda Medhat’s work has been exhibited widely across Canada at CIBC Square, the Textile Museum of Canada, Art Gallery of Guelph, CAFKA, DesignTO, Cambridge Art Gallery, and Nuit Blanche Toronto and Halifax.
Roda is the recipient of the CIBC C2 Art Prize (2024), the 401 Richmond Career Launcher Prize, and multiple grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. His public art commissions include permanent installations with the Toronto Transit Commission and the City of Toronto, with additional works installed in Mississauga. He holds a BFA from OCAD University, studied film production at FAMU in Prague, and is completing his MFA at the University of Guelph.
The Art Gallery of Burlington (AGB) is a public art gallery dedicated to delivering thought-provoking exhibitions, dynamic learning opportunities, and public programs that foster meaningful connections. Through the activation of our collection of contemporary Canadian ceramics, we disrupt the binary of contemporary art and craft, exploring the rich intersections between the two.
AGB is a gathering place for experiences, ideas, and conversations rooted in the breadth of human creativity. We realize this commitment by producing exhibitions that critically engage with contemporary art, developing programming that expands the boundaries of traditional arts education, and supporting artists, youth, and the broader community in their personal, professional, and artistic growth.
Things I Can Fold, Deflate, and Break is generously sponsored by Partners In Art. The Art Gallery of Burlington is supported by the City of Burlington and Ontario Arts Council.
