Alberta Printmakers is pleased to present:
Ashes! Ashes! by Margaret Joba-Woodruff
In the Alberta Printmakers Main Gallery from February 20 - April 10, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, February 20 from 7pm - 9pm (artist in attendance)
About the Exhibition
“Most prints are contact relics in this sense, inasmuch as they are essentially stains on one surface that attest to damage done to another surface.”
Jennifer L. Roberts, Contact: Art and the Pull of Print
Soot on the inside of a fireplace. Drops of candle wax on a dining table. A felt blanket draped over the armrest of a chair. Ashes! Ashes! is an exhibition grounded in the materials of charcoal, beeswax, paper and wool combined with printed gestures of cutting, redrawing, and wiping away. As I reflect on the 14 houses that I have moved in and out of over the last decade, I turn to drawing as both an archival and speculative practice. The works exhibited here trace both real memories and imagined scenarios of these homes and the 25 people I shared them with, manipulating the images through techniques of monotype, collagraph, and mokulito to reveal themes of comfort, deterioration, and repair. For myself and many of those closest to me, our paths through the smog of urban housing precarity have been lined with neglectful landlords, deteriorating architecture, personal conflicts, unpaid debts, and threatening property managers. By sinking its teeth into moments in these spaces and the relationships made and lost in them, Ashes! Ashes! wonders — with uncertainty, grief, and sometimes hope— what is left behind, what do we take with us, and where do we go from here?
Margaret Joba-Woodruff is a visual artist whose practice employs an interdisciplinary approach to printmaking to consider the intersections of land, body, family, memory, and labour. After completing a BFA in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia in 2020, she became a worker-owner of the Vancouver Artist Labour Union Cooperative before relocating to St John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) to spend a year in residence as the ‘22-’23 Don Wright Scholar at St Michael’s Printshop. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts NL, and has been exhibited across Canada, in the UK, and Taiwan.
Born in Montréal and raised on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Joba-Woodruff is once again living in Vancouver, BC as a guest on the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations after two meaningful years of living and working in Ktaqmkuk.
Alberta Printmakers Main Gallery from February 20 - April 10, 2026
Alberta Printmakers | 460 42 Avenue SE, Calgary/Mohkinstsis
Open Wednesdays from 10am - 8pm, and Thursdays through Saturdays from 10am - 5pm
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