Bound to Birth
Date:
Fri, Oct 16th, 2026 to Sat, Dec 19th, 2026Time:
10:00 am to 4:00 pm
Description:
Bound to Birth brings together four artist’s books by interdisciplinary printmaker and bookmaker Darian Goldin Stahl, whose practice explores the intersections of art, medicine, disability, reproductive health, and lived bodily experience.
Through printmaking, bookmaking, storytelling, and collaborative research, Stahl considers how experiences that are often reduced to medical terminology or clinical records might instead be understood through the voices and bodies of those who have lived them. At the centre of the exhibition is 100′ Scar , a monumental artist’s book created from the narratives of six women who received Caesarean sections at Kelowna General Hospital. Extending one hundred feet, the work transforms the physical scar of a C-section into both the structure of the book and a pathway through the gallery. Suspended at eye level and spiralling inward, the book invites visitors to enter the work, following its pages as they unfold through space. Moving alongside the narratives becomes a physical act of reading, reflecting the varied and deeply personal journeys of healing, vulnerability, and acceptance held within the work. Surrounding 100′ Scar are three additional artist’s books that expand the exhibition’s consideration of bodies, care, reproduction, and medical experience. Birth Work brings together five books containing interviews with birth workers, using collagraph and ink transfer to give material form to their experiences and knowledge. Bad Roommate , made from encaustic transfer and microbial cellulose, considers the complicated experience of living alongside and within an unruly body. Vessels , an accordion book composed of mason jar-shaped pages, gathers stories of embryo donation and the complex relationships between bodies, reproduction, family, and care. Installed on curved reading tables, these works are presented not simply as objects to observe, but as books to spend time with. A reading nook further extends this invitation, creating space for visitors to sit, read, and consider the experiences shared throughout the exhibition. Across Bound to Birth , the book becomes more than a container for information. It becomes an embodied form—something held, unfolded, entered, and encountered over time. Bringing personal testimony into conversation with medical imagery and material experimentation, Stahl creates space for experiences that can be difficult to articulate within conventional medical narratives. In doing so, the exhibition asks us to consider what becomes possible when lived experience is not treated as supplementary to medical knowledge, but as knowledge in its own right.
About the Artist
Dr. Darian Goldin Stahl is an interdisciplinary printmaker and bookmaker whose practice explores medicine, disability, perinatal experiences, and wellbeing. She holds a SSHRC Vanier research-creation PhD in Humanities from Concordia University, an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta, and a BFA in Printmaking from Indiana University Bloomington. She recently completed a SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UNBC Northern Medical Program and Health Arts Research Centre. Her dissertation, Embodied Books: Experiencing the Health Humanities through Artists’ Books , was published by Peter Lang International Academic Publishers in 2024. In 2021, Stahl launched the Embodied Books Project , an initiative supporting bookmakers in creating artist’s books about personal medical experiences. Her artist’s books are held in permanent collections internationally, including the Wellcome Collection in London, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, the Moody Library at Baylor University, and the Herron Art Library at Indiana University. Her prints are also permanently displayed in medical spaces, including the Toronto General Hospital Medical Library and the BARLO Multiple Sclerosis Centre in Toronto.
Venue:
Vernon Public Art Gallery
Address:3228-31st Avenue, Vernon, V1T 2H3
Cost:
Admission by donationTicketing and/or registration:
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