Faculty of Arts & Science

Criticism and Curatorial Practice

Asia Ruggiero

Seden Lai

Seden Lai is an artist and designer working in Toronto. Integrating foraged previously discarded objects with materials like paper, metal, and fabric, she responds instinctively to material fragments embedded in the every day. Her practice embraces the messages that may be hidden within the mundane; tracing connections between singular moments and cyclical returns.One work by Lai is featured as part of the exhibition Sunlight in a Deep Forest, on view at Mark Christopher Gallery March 27 to April 17 2026. Curated by Asia Ruggiero. Documentation by Philip Leonard Ocampo.

“Seden Lai, The Purest Gift, 2026. Watercolour and pencil crayon on canvas, hammered aluminum, gampi paper, mixed-media, 20 x 16 in. Drawing on Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, the piece considers seeds as vessels of reciprocity. The apple is deconstructed and redistributed into its elemental parts, laid out across the box in separate stages: its skin unfurls into hammered, curling metal forms that arc and coil across the upper plane, while the pale flesh below is arranged in soft translucent segments, each piece isolated and set apart. At the edge, a small line of dark seeds appears in sequence. These seeds become carriers of continuation, holding within them a future that unfolds through inheritance and dispersal. ”