TORONTO.- The Gardiner Museum presents the return of the International Ceramic Art Fair (ICAF), its biennial celebration of innovation and contemporary directions in ceramics, running May 28 to August 16, 2026.
This year, ICAF is expanded significantly from a 10-day event to a 12-week exhibition and public program, positioning the fair at the forefront of how ceramics is evolving across art, design, and emerging technologies.
At the heart of this year’s edition is the theme “the city and the commons,” presenting ceramics as both material and method for examining how we live together in rapidly changing cities. From architecture to infrastructure, ceramics shelter, connect, and ground us, offering new ways to think about belonging, resilience, and shared space.
“ICAF 2026 looks at ceramics not only as one of the oldest and most deeply human artistic traditions, but as a medium shaping the future,” says Dr. Sequoia Miller, Chief Curator & Deputy Director at the Gardiner Museum. “By bringing together traditional approaches with contemporary forms and technologies, the exhibition explores how we build a sense of belonging and connection while sharing and sustaining urban life today.”
FEATURED ARTISTS AND GALLERIES
ICAF 2026 features a dynamic roster of Canadian and international artists whose practices reflect the breadth and evolution of contemporary ceramics today.
Canadian Artists
● Eve Tagny (Cooper Cole) — A multidisciplinary artist working in lens-based media, installation, performance, and ceramics to explore how we create spaces of shelter and care in urban environments
● Magalie Guérin (Galerie Nicolas Robert) — A Texas-based, Montreal-born artist whose topographical paintings and ceramic sculptures call to mind nature, bodies, and buildings
● Mel Arsenault (Galerie Nicolas Robert) — Arsenault’s vessels explore notions of wonder and well-being linked to access to nature in urban environments
● Hadi Jamali — Originally from Tehran, Jamali works at the intersection of mixed-material installation, interactivity, and time-based media to engage with contemporary forms of (dis)location: geographic, cognitive, temporal, and moral
● Suzanne Morrissette and Jaimie Isaac (ROSEMARY Gallery) — ROSEMARY Gallery leads community-driven projects rooted in Indigenous knowledge, land-based practices, and collective making
● Christine Howard Sandoval (parrasch heijnen) — A multidisciplinary artist living in Vancouver whose work questions the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation
International Artists
● Ronald Rael — A design activist and pioneer in 3D-printed earthen architecture, merging digital fabrication with ancestral building practices
● Sharif Farrag (Jeffrey Deitch) — Creates intricate ceramic worlds that blend his Arab heritage and Southern California subcultures, combining the technical precision of classical pottery with the improvisational energy of skate culture and the density of urban spaces
● Anders Herwald Ruhwald (Morán Morán) — Danish-American sculptor whose large-scale ceramic plant-works function as environments for growth, care, and ecological thinking
● Jolie Ngo (R & Company) — Using a 3D printer, Ngo blends new-age machinery with traditional craft, creating layered sculptures that reference her Vietnamese heritage
● Noor Ali Chagani and Clio Lloyd-Jacob — The UK-based artists collaborate on an installation of miniature clay buildings set against a clay drawing that raises questions about public space and private memory
TECHNOLOGY, LAND, AND THE POLITICS OF THE COMMONS
Across ICAF 2026, the artists engage directly with the political realities that shape how land is defined, divided, and experienced, employing ancestral practices and new technologies.
Ronald Rael’s work considers borders not only as physical barriers, but as sites of exchange and possibility. Known for projects that protest the wall between the U.S. and Mexico, including Teeter-Totter Wall (2019), his practice reimagines how architecture and material can challenge systems of division and rethink access to shared spaces.
A central highlight of the exhibition is Rael’s pioneering use of 3D printing, which merges ancestral adobe building techniques with cutting-edge digital fabrication. A custom ceramic printer will operate live in the gallery, producing modular clay forms that evolve into a large-scale installation over the course of the exhibition, bringing his concept of “AI³” (Artificial, Ancestral, and Additive Intelligence) to life.
Iranian Canadian artist Hadi Jamali draws on the visual language of Middle Eastern cities to explore political instability and its impact on daily life. His large-scale installation, constructed as a shifting ceramic terrain, incorporates sensors triggered by the visitor’s presence. As the structure tilts, the landscape destabilizes and a dark liquid spreads across its surface, reflecting the fragility of cities shaped by conflict, displacement, and uncertainty.
Christine Howard Sandoval, an enrolled member of the Chalon Nation in Bakersfield, California, examines land through an Indigenous lens, reflecting on how colonial systems have reshaped relationships to territory. Drawing on her community’s connection to California, her video work and sculptural clay mounds revisit sites marked by missionization to consider how land, memory, and identity are continuously redefined across borders.
These and other works expand the exhibition’s theme of “the city and the commons,” asking who has access to space, how boundaries are constructed, and what it means to belong within increasingly contested landscapes.
