the Weight of hair
October 2, 2026 – February 28, 2027
An exhibit of visual art exploring hair as medium and symbol.
the highbrow
2-1019 Third Ave, New Westminster, BC
Next Event
October 2-4, 2026
The Highbrow, New Westminster
Hair grows with the body, carrying traces of time, memory and change. At once intimate and public, ordinary and deeply symbolic, it quietly reflects the ways we understand ourselves and one another.
The Weight of Hair brings together seven women artists working across Ukrainian, Canadian, Bangladeshi and American cultural contexts. Through installation, sculpture, photography, textiles and interdisciplinary practices, the exhibition explores hair as a material shaped by personal experience, cultural traditions and broader social realities.
Presented within The Highbrow, Pickle Underground’s artist-run studio housed inside a private apartment, the exhibition creates a series of encounters between works that reveal the many ways hair can be understood, remembered and experienced. Curated by artist Roksolana Uhryniuk, the exhibition brings together works that approach hair through questions of memory, identity, ritual, care and control, allowing multiple meanings to emerge through the dialogue between the participating artists.
The exhibition can be explored during various public events and open houses.
public viewingS + events
October 2, 2026, 7:00 pm | reception + artist talk
The opening evening features a conversation with Roksolana Uhryniuk, Asma Sultana and Anna Pidgorna, followed by an informal reception and audience Q&A.
Language: English
Registration required. Admission by optional donation.
October 3, 2026, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm | Open House + Guided Tours
Explore the exhibit independently or join one of our curator-led tours to learn more about the exhibition, the artists and the ideas behind the works. Free. No registration required.
GUIDED TOURS
1:00 pm (in English)
3:00 pm (in Ukrainian)
October 3, 2026, 6:00 pm | Reception + Artist Talk
The evening features a conversation with with Roksolana Uhryniuk, Asma Sultana and Anna Pidgorna, followed by an informal reception and audience Q&A.
Language: English
Registration required. Admission by optional donation.
October 4, 2026, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm | Open House + Guided Tours
Explore the exhibit independently or join one of our curator-led tours to learn more about the exhibition, the artists and the ideas behind the works. Free. No registration required.
GUIDED TOURS
12:00 pm (in English)
2:00 pm (in Ukrainian)
4:00 pm (in English)
artists
olena kayinska | visual artist
Olena Kayinska is an artist based in Lviv, Ukraine. She works in the genre of intellectual primitivism, paired with deep philosophical and psychological meanings. Her artistic career began in 2012. The focus of her artistic research is trauma and post-traumatic recovery, psycho-somatic healing, inner depth and complexity, inner struggle, and the dichotomy we experience alongside the knowledge that we are finite beings. Kayinska has participated in 100+ exhibitions, contemporary art festivals, and art residencies, and has exhibited 19 personal projects. She has worked as a curator of group exhibitions, artist residencies, and relocation programs for artists at risk. Her paintings are held in museum funds and private collections in Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy, France, Hungary, the United States, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
oleksandra pavlovska | visual artist
Oleksandra Pavlovska is a Ukrainian artist based in Kyiv whose practice explores loneliness, human connection, self-knowledge, and the psychological dimensions of contemporary life. Currently working primarily with painting, she approaches art as a means of conveying ideas and creating a connection between the inner world and external experience. Photography, which played a central role in her earlier practice, became a tool for examining fears of loneliness—in crowds, relationships, family, and one’s own body—and the diminishing role of sincerity and empathy in increasingly mediated communication. Pavlovska studied art at the National Pedagogical University and photography at the Viktor Marushchenko Photo School. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, festivals, and residencies in Ukraine and internationally. She is also a curator and founder of the “Wishna” Art Center for Spiritual Development.
Photo by Anya Chibis
ANNA PIDGORNA | composer
Anna Pidgorna is a Ukrainian-Canadian composer, vocalist, multi-media artist and producer who combines sound, visual arts, and writing to create works that are dramatic and picturesque. She works extensively with opera and voice, draws inspiration from Ukrainian folk singing and the natural soundscape, and incorporates visual elements into some of her manuscripts. Her work has been commissioned, performed and recorded by soloists and ensembles in Canada, USA, Uruguay, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Poland, Ukraine and South Korea. She holds a PhD from Princeton University, an MMus from the University of Calgary, and a BA from Mount Allison University. Anna is the founder and Artistic and Executive Director of Pickle Underground.
olga skliarska | visual artist + ceramist
Olha Skliarska is a Ukrainian visual artist and ceramist, born in Sambir in 1993 and based in Poznań, Poland, since 2017. Working primarily with performance art, visual poetry, and drawing, she explores discrimination, the psychology of human behaviour, sensitive groups, and the boundaries between private and public space. Since 2019, her practice has developed around Body Extended, examining the evolving meanings of objects and spaces integrated with the human body. Corporeality and hair also form a recurring part of her artistic research. Skliarska has participated in numerous exhibitions and performance festivals in Poland and internationally. She is a member of the performance groups Zabih and Zapora and runs Skliarska Ceramic, working between design and art. She is a laureate of the Maria Dokowicz competition and a former Gaude Polonia scholarship holder.
nadiia sobko | visual artist
Nadiia Sobko lives and works in Kyiv. She holds a Master’s degree in Artistic Ceramics from the Lviv National Academy of Arts and is in a long-term open relationship with clay, which allows her to constantly experiment with different materials. A Gaude Polonia scholarship in 2021 became an important point in her artistic practice. After February 24, 2022, Sobko considers it her personal duty to speak abroad about the war in Ukraine through her art. Since then, she has developed projects through exhibitions and residencies in Austria, Israel, Germany, Poland, Georgia, Finland, and France, while continuing to live and work in Kyiv. Through these projects, she speaks about Ukraine, home, war, resistance, and her own experience of living through a reality that continues to reshape both her life and artistic practice.
asma sultana | visual artist
Based in Toronto, Asma Sultana is a South Asian interdisciplinary diasporic artist whose work explores the physical and cultural ramifications of climate change. Integrating traditional Bengali Nakshi Kantha techniques with organic materials, such as her own hair, she sutures the personal to the ecological. Informed by her transit between Bangladesh, England, and Canada, her autobiographical, research-based practice employs hair and thumbprints as media to investigate identity within the frameworks of time and space. Sultana has exhibited and curated internationally, and her work is held in numerous private collections. She has trained in Fine Arts and Art History in Bangladesh, England, and Canada, including studies at York University and Oxford University. She is currently an MFA candidate at York University, where her research is supported by the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship.
Roksolana uhryniuk | multidisciplinary artist
Born in Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine, Roksolana Uhryniuk is a multidisciplinary artist working with performance, video, installation, drawing, and ready-made. In her practice, she explores the intersections of personal and collective memory, focusing on themes of trauma and adaptation. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Ukraine and Canada, as well as in artistic residencies and laboratories. After emigrating to Canada in 2020, her practice expanded to reflect on experiences of displacement, vulnerability, and continuity, while remaining deeply rooted in the Ukrainian artistic context.
Alongside her artistic practice, she engages in curatorial work, which she approaches as an extension of her artistic research. Through curatorship, she moves beyond the framework of her own works, engaging with the perspectives of other artists to deepen and broaden the exploration of questions central to her practice.
production team
PRODUCER | Anna Pidgorna
CURATOR + COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR | Roksolana Uhryniuk
donors
Mariian Berezovskyi
Sarah Stirling
sponsors
We acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia.
partners
Pickle Underground Artist Society (Incorporated under BC Societies Act, Incorporation No: S0080384)
Copyright © 2025 Pickle Underground Artist Society – All Rights Reserved.