Metabolic Loop

The Delaney Family Emerging Curator’s Prize

January 21 - May 16, 2026
Onsite Gallery, Toronto, ON

Artists:
Alyssa Alikpala
Maria Simmons

Curated by GAS Collective

Curatorial Essay by GAS Collective

“Metabolism is everywhere and nowhere.” - Landecker [1]

Metabolic Loop explores the in-betweenness of natural and artificial environments through the concept of metabolism. Curated by GAS Collective, the two-person exhibition features multi-sensory works by artists Alyssa Alikpala and Maria Simmons. It foregrounds their artistic practices that render largely inaccessible environments such as peatlands, and invisible experiences such as metabolism and fermentation more accessible, accentuating the tension and balance involved in translating natural phenomena into gallery spaces through technological means.

Metabolism can be understood as a fundamental biochemical process that sustains life. The notion of process is emphasized as the concept involves continuous exchange of matter breaking down (catabolism) and building up (anabolism), maintaining and changing across cycles of organisms, bodies, and environments. Life sciences historian and sociologist Hannah Landecker describes metabolism as “the interface between inside and outside, the space of conversion of one to another, of matter to energy, of substrate to waste, of synthesis and break down. A process-thing, it is always in time.” [2] Taking this definition as a departure point, the exhibition seeks to investigate the creative potentials of metabolism in gallery spaces and exhibition-making through the works of Alikpala and Simmons.

Both artists' practices are grounded in processes that embody the traits of metabolism. In the book "After Eating: Metabolizing the Arts", artist and scholar Lindsay Kelley has described how art and metabolism both reflect "the processes of making, unmaking and transforming matter, prioritizing immersion and encounter over distant observation." [3] Works of Alikpala and Simmons echo this notion: they attend to organic matters and discarded materials, engage in processes such as papermaking and fermentation to "unmake" them, and transform them into new structures and entities through incorporation of digital approaches.

Simmons’ video work Anoxic Memory, alongside her hands-on (re)creations of fermentations, bogs and peatlands, reveals the process of slow decomposition in these landscapes to audiences as a form of metabolism. For Alikpala, her immersive installation embodies metabolic circulation in the body and its surroundings. It investigates the constant exchanges of energy and the traces that are left behind or carried forward within the body and environments.

Together, the artists bring these omnipresent yet invisible processes into the gallery space, inviting audiences to reflect on their roles in these loops of metabolism. This exhibition also seeks to reimagine gallery spaces as dynamic, potentialized environments. Curator Chus Martinez in her e-flux article "The Octopus in Love" has asked readers to envision art spaces as organisms that host artworks and visitors instead of merely exhibiting them within fixed guidelines. [4] This raises questions for us as curators: What curatorial strategies can we employ to metabolize the gallery space, both literally and metaphorically? How can curators navigate the tension and balance between entangled concepts of exhbition-making–nature and technologies, organic and inorganic, change and stability?

The exhibition creates a visual and conceptual interplay where the natural and artificial co-exist, constantly undergoing metabolic transformation. It engages audiences in the ever-expanding cycles of breakdown and renewal through works of Alikpala and Simmons, activating Metabolic Loop within the gallery and beyond.

[1] Landecker, Hannah. (2013). The Metabolism of Philosophy, In Three Parts.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kelley, Lindsay. (2023). After Eating: Metabolizing The Arts. P.22.
[4] Martinez, Chus.(2014). Octopus in Love. e-flux Journal, Issue #55 essay.

Metabolic Loop, 2026, installation view. Onsite Gallery, OCAD University, Toronto. Photo by Polina Teif