Proof is Gallery 44’s annual group exhibition of work by emerging Canadian artists. Works exhibited in Proof reflect a range of current concerns and practices in contemporary photography and lens-based media. For many artists Proof is often one of the first exhibitions in a professional context for an emerging artist. Past exhibitions have featured work by Kotama Bouabane, Leila Fatemi, Isabelle Hayeur, Anique Jordan, Laurie Kang, Germaine Koh, Luther Konadu, Meryl McMaster, Karice Mitchell, Elise Rasmussen, Michaëlle Sergile and Althea Thauberger.
Dion Smith-Dokkie lives and works in the Peace Region of northwest Alberta, Treaty 8. They hold an MFA in Visual Arts from UBC, a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia, and a BA Humanities from UVIC. Dion’s work has shown at places like the Polygon, Gallery Gachet, The Bows, the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, SUM, and Wil Aballe. He has taken part in residencies like CommonOpulence, the Banff Centre, New Media Gallery and Griffin Art Projects. Their practice has been supported by the BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts and he has received awards like the Kwi Am Choi Scholarship Prize and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Master’s scholarship for research on landscape painting. Dion received the PLATFORM Photography Award in 2025 and will present a solo show there in March 2026. They are a member of West Moberly First Nations.
Long Xi Vlessing (b. 2000) is a photographer, filmmaker and visual artist born in East Van, Vancouver, British Columbia on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including that of the Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkwəy̓əm, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ nations, and living in Montréal, Québec on the unceded territory of the Kanien’keha:ka. He graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies, his studies focused on visual media and the moving image. His evolving artistic practice centres the medium of photography in exploring the intimacy of interpersonal relationships, the shared humanity of strangers, the lived-in body, the novel possibility of text, and quotidian scenes as sites of personal transformation. His work often emerges from his intrigue, curiosity, and restlessness regarding the playful and political contours of ordinary images and everyday life. This is reflected in his circadian practice, playing with the photographic medium through a mix of digital, medium-format and phone cameras in the tradition of documentary.
Parumveer Walia (b. Chandigarh, India) is a lens-based artist working in photography and film. His practice extends image-making into video, installation, and object-based forms, drawing on expanded media and queer aesthetics. Through archival research, Walia situates historical episodes within his lived experiences to construct hybrid narratives that remain deliberately unstable. He holds a BFA with a minor in Curatorial Studies from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and was a finalist for the Philip B. Lind Prize in 2024. He previously served as Executive Director and Curator of Unit 302, and his work has been exhibited at The Polygon Gallery (Canada), TRAPP Projects (Canada), Capture Photography Festival (Canada), BINNAR Arts Festival (Portugal), and the Paxos Biennale (Greece), among others. In 2024, he was Writer-in-Residence at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, and his photobook At the Edge of Water will be released in December 2025. He is a returning Gender Studies lecturer with the Feminist Lecture Program and is currently commissioned by the City of Vancouver for a new public art project.
Tommy Keith (b. 1993, Canada) is a photographer based in Toronto, Ontario. He makes photographs of people and places close to where he lives, and his projects often involve returning to the same areas over extended periods of time. Tommy’s work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Fisheye Magazine, and Vogue Italia, among others. His self-published book “Don’t Forget to Wave” received an Honourable Mention for The Burtynsky Grant and was a Lucie Photo Book Prize finalist. He holds an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago.
Based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal, Zaynab Ghaïs-Mortada is a self-taught artist who works primarily with photographic objects. Her artistic work has been featured in publications across North America and Europe, and has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Québec. Zaynab holds a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from McGill University and has led research on gendered Islamophobia and epistemic violence in Québec. Beyond her artistic and academic practices, she is an agricultural worker with over a decade of experience tending gardens in Tiohtiá:ke.
