For all the noise and uproar from politicians, Canada and the U.S. are right next to each other, where they’ve always been. Or has something shifted? Toronto-based artist Leala Hewak’s new exhibition for CONTACT “Won’t You Be My Neighbour,” opening in Toronto this evening, offers a uniquely variable perspective. Here, she explains.
In Canada I am often mistaken for an American. Perhaps it’s my impatient, loud interrupting, due to ADHD. In fact, however, when I was a baby, my father moved our family from Winnipeg to the Bronx, New York to pursue a postdoc at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I learned to speak American there: a purse was a “pocketbook” and runners were “sneakers.” I still remember holding tight to my mother in a dark elevator as a loud stranger thrust a lollipop at me, and a concrete playground full of black and white children squealing and fighting, screaming at me: COME PLAY WITH US!
Were it not for the Vietnam war (they were drafting doctors, so we left when I was five), today I think I would be that loud, pushy New York broad everyone thinks I am. Today, whenever I go to the U.S. these memory fragments reintegrate through interaction with strangers, elevating them into kin of sorts.
Most Canadians cannot understand how so many Americans could elect Donald Trump not once but twice. By now, most Americans can’t either. Are they fools? Are they children? We would never do such a thing, would we? Canada’s national ethos is “peace, order and good government” — in other words, grownup behaviour. But in our secret heart don’t we still envy and admire Americans’ reckless bravery, ridiculous bravado and foolish pride? Their Constitution is a veritable codified id: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Americans seem like the child within us: loveable, unpredictable tantrum-throwers, attracted by shiny objects. No doubt some U.S. voters were in lock step with Trump’s worst impulses, but the majority of the disenfranchised, demoralized and desperate masses were simply ripe for his Barnum and Bailey act.
In December 2024, after our southern neighbours returned Trump to the presidency, I began shooting portraits of random Americans and Canadians. Here are a few of the hundreds I collected, some of them presented on this printed page as surreal “blended” portraits. This is because the artworks in the gallery exhibition are not photographic stills. They are lenticulars (remember the “winking Jesus” postcards?) presented as Canadian/American “faceoffs.” As you approach each portrait, one face morphs into the other, then back again. Which one is Canadian? Which one American? Can you tell the difference?
My art often drifts toward social justice issues (I was formerly a criminal defence lawyer) but depressing or heavy-handed “message” art repels me. I prefer to use empathy and humour to create visual pleasure and the irresistible urge to LOOK — not look away.
Lenticular printing — which entered mass culture in the 1950s via prizes in Cracker Jack boxes, political buttons, postcards and novelty religious items — is by nature a “fun” medium, creating movement without a digital screen. In my work, however, lenticulars create a conceptual layer as static objects containing latent physical/temporal shifts. Think of the Canada/U.S. border — the longest undefended border in the world, seen (until recently) as a symbol of mutual trust and peaceful coexistence. Just like a lenticular print it appears fixed and stable, yet it changes depending on the viewer’s position. For decades the border felt virtually invisible, crossed easily through shared culture, trade, friendship and family ties. But Trump tariffs, nationalism and suspicion have altered how Canadians and Americans perceive one another. The border itself has not moved, yet it now seems to contain different emotional realities at the same time — a static object exemplifying shifts of trust, tension, and uncertainty.
Capturing photo portraits on the fly is an inherently risky activity that demands a high tolerance for rejection. I often have only a moment with subjects (mostly passersby in a hurry with little time to spare). But I find Americans say yes far more than Canadians. Are they more trusting? More vain? More curious? All of the above, I suppose. Sometimes I encounter so-called “ugly” Americans. But nothing they can say or do affects me more than the sadness I feel hearing American strangers reflexively say “I’m sorry” when they discover I am Canadian.
“Won’t You Be My Neighbour: Lenticular Portraits,” a CONTACT2026 Photography Festival Exhibition, runs May 24 from 5-9 p.m. atPenthouse Gallery. See https://contactphoto.com/festival/2026/open-call/wont-you-be-my-neighbour for venue address and details. Hewak’s recent work is online at instagram.com/lealahewak.
