A porcelain figure with silver butterfly wings appears against an ink mural in Sami Tsang’s What We Carry Forward (2026), commissioned by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.
Photo credit: Sami Tsang, detail of What We Carry Forward, 2026. Ink, porcelain, and silver. Commissioned by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.
Small porcelain figures of girls appear throughout Sami Tsang’s What We Carry Forward, a site-specific work combining a large-scale ink mural with porcelain and silver. Some figures climb, wander or rest; others have silver butterfly wings that The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery describes as a form of armour. The Toronto gallery opens the exhibition on October 24, with the work scheduled to remain on view until March 21, 2027.
The installation is the inaugural project in The Power Plant’s Smokestack Commission Program. Tsang, a Chinese-Canadian artist based in Toronto, draws on childhood experiences of shadow puppetry for the mural. Her choice of materials also brings together two strands of her practice: painting and ceramics.
In an artist Q&A published by The Power Plant, Tsang described plans for approximately 70 small porcelain figures of girls distributed across the mural. She said she wanted visitors to come closer to discover the individual figures, which are easily missed when taking in the larger work. The mural and the porcelain figures are intended to be encountered at different distances, giving visitors details to seek out as they move around the installation.
Tsang also explained the relationship between the materials in that Q&A: “The clay holds the body, while the silver protects the spirit.” The gallery describes the silver butterfly wings as armour. The ink mural supplies a setting for the figures, while porcelain gives each girl an individual physical presence within the larger composition.
Family stories, migration, memory and cultural inheritance are recurring concerns in Tsang’s work, according to her artist statement. In its description of What We Carry Forward, The Power Plant connects the installation to the experiences and knowledge that pass between generations.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1997, Tsang studied traditional Chinese painting in Hong Kong for seven years. She graduated from Sheridan College in 2019 and earned a master of fine arts degree in ceramics from Alfred University in New York in 2021. She has since developed her career in Toronto, including time working at Harbourfront Centre.
Tsang previously exhibited at The Power Plant in 2023 as part of in parallel, alongside artist Ella Gonzales. The gallery's coverage of that exhibition explored how she used ceramics and personal narrative to address displacement. More recently, Tsang presented Our Family Portrait at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York in 2025 and received the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics the same year.
What We Carry Forward was also part of The Power Plant’s September 17, 2026, Power Ball programme, which included multiple art commissions. The October 24 date is the beginning of the announced exhibition run rather than the work’s first appearance at the gallery. The Smokestack presentation is curated by artistic director Adelina Vlas and TD Curatorial Fellow Sarah Edo.
The Power Plant will hold its fall opening celebration on Friday, October 23, from 7 to 9 p.m., with an advance RSVP required. What We Carry Forward opens for its regular exhibition run on Saturday, October 24, at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, 231 Queens Quay West, Toronto. The exhibition continues through March 21, 2027, and gallery admission is free.
Ontario alternative pop-rock duo Little White Lies released “String Me Along” on October 2, a song that Katie Rose Campbell says grew out of a difficult U.S. tour and a change in how the band approaches its career