Never One Thing Alone, co-curated by Liz Ikiriko and Jaclyn Quaresma, considers intricate networks of solidarity and connection, movements of resistance, and collective action alongside the work of aka TAWLA, Dana Qaddah, Joyce Joumaa, Sharlene Bamboat, Roï Saade and Tamara Abdul Hadi. Never One Thing Alone charts the artists’ intersecting networks, which serve to strengthen one another, sometimes across borders. Finding solidarity even in the most difficult circumstances, these artists—from Cairo, Beirut, Khartoum, Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto—are forging their own shadow paths through and against systems of colonial and capitalist extraction.

Curating this exhibition collaboratively, Liz Ikiriko and Jaclyn Quaresma look to collectives, counter-schools, and alternative modes of working that sustain us through the labor of radical transformation. The invited artists utilize immersive and experimental film, sculpture, and photobook publishing to seek common ground with love and resilience.

Program Details

April 10 – May 31, 2025
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Co-Curated by Liz Ikiriko Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by aka TAWLA, Dana Qaddah, Joyce Joumaa, Sharlene Bamboat, Roï Saade and Tamara Abdul Hadi.
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Images Festival, Toronto in partnership with Gallery TPW, Art Metropole and Issues Magazine Shop
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Photo documentation by Darren Rigo

Public Programs:

Opening Night | Images Festival, Thursday, April 10, 2025 7:30PM – late. Join us on Thursday, April 10 at Gallery TPW for opening night of Images Festival, along with the opening of Never One Thing Alone. From 9pm till midnight, ESCOBUTT will be on the decks providing sounds through the night!

Bound Narratives | Workshop, Saturday, April 19, 2025 2PM-4PM Join hosts Roï Saade and Tamara Abdul Hadi for an engaging conversation on the role of photography and photobook making as forms of anti-colonial solidarity. Registration required.

Artist Talk | Dana Qaddah & Joyce Joumaa Moderated by Liz Ikiriko & Jaclyn Quaresma, Saturday, May 10, 2025 12PM-2PM​. Join us at the gallery on Saturday, May 10 for an artist talk with Dana Qaddah & Joyce Joumaa, moderated by Liz Ikiriko and Jaclyn Quaresma.

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aka TAWLA

aka TAWLA is a collective of photobook makers from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, supporting photobook making and advocating for alternative narratives. The collective focuses on showcasing photobooks produced by and originating from SWANA, as well as publishing their own zines and photobooks. Expanding beyond the traditional documentary frameworks, overused misrepresentations, and flattened narratives that has othered our communities for decades, we aim to support visual storytellers from our region, make photography and visual storytelling accessible, and create connections between local and international visual storytellers and audiences.

Dana Qaddah

Dana Qaddah (b. Beirut, Lebanon) is an interdisciplinary artist and organizer whose work centres themes of building from, and through, colonial legacies, environmental and economic deterioration, and the condition of being abstracted from the sense of self and place.

Joyce Joumaa

Joyce Joumaa is a video artist based between Beirut and Montreal. After growing up in Lebanon, she pursued a BFA in Film Studies at Concordia University in Canada. Her work focuses on microhistories within Lebanon as a way to understand how past structures inform the present moment.

Liz Ikiriko

Liz Ikiriko is a Tkaronto/Toronto-based artist and curator. Drawing on her experiences as a mixed Nigerian Canadian, prairie-raised queerspawn daughter and mother, her projects and curiosities engage, question and confront strategies of oppression and systems of power. Liz is the Curator at Gallery TPW and co-founder alongside Toleen Touq, of wave~form~projects, a collective that studies intimate and relational curatorial practice. She has previously held curatorial positions at the Art Museum, University of Toronto, the Art Gallery of York University and was a member of the curatorial committee of the 13th Edition of Bamako Encounters African Biennial of Photography in Mali.

Her recent projects include Never One Thing Alone w/artists Sharlene Bamboat, Joyce Joumaa, Dana Qaddah, Roï Saade and collective AKA Tawla, co-curated w/Jaclyn Quaresma, presented w/IMAGES Festival, Toronto (2025); When Witnessing is Not Enough, writer, Capture Photography Festival (2025), a lineage of transgression with artists jamilah malika abu-bakare, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Shala Miller, Cecily Nicholson and M.NourbeSe Philip, co-curated w/Nya Lewis at Artspeak, Vancouver(2025); Elemental Fire: Tim Whiten, curated at the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto(2023); As We Rise: Photography (and) Sounds from the Black Atlantic, writer liner notes and book, Aperture (2022).

Liz received her MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University and has taught at Toronto Metropolitan University and Sheridan College. She has published critical texts with Aperture, Public Journal, C Magazine, Blackflash and held appointments on several local and international advisory boards and juries.

Roï Saade

Roï Saade is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the intersectionality between graphic design, photography, and the arts. Saade designs and curates photography exhibitions, film festivals, magazines and has developed Bound Narratives: A Photobook Library which brings together a curated selection of photobooks made from and about the Middle East and North African region by a wide variety of talented authors and artists.

Sharlene Bamboat

Sharlene Bamboat is a moving image and installation artist based in Tio’ta:ke/Montreal. Her practice often engages with translation, history, and music, uncovering sensory and fractured ways of knowing. Sharlene regularly collaborates with artists, musicians, and writers to animate historical, political, legal, and pop-culture materials. Sharlene has screened and exhibited internationally.

Tamara Abdul Hadi

Tamara Abdul Hadi is an Iraqi photographer and educator investigating the links between photography and representations of culture. Along with being a photographer, Tamara is an educator who has taught in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Tunisia and Canada. Her work has been published in the mainstream media extensively, though she now prefers to work for more independent entities. Her photographs have been exhibited worldwide. She often collaborates with Roï Saade, her partner in life and vision. Abdul Hadi’s debut monograph Picture an Arab Man was published in 2022.