Walter Phillips Gallery welcomes visitors this summer with the communal possibilities of water in Diane Borsato: A Clean Place to Swim and creative artmaking for children and youth with Family ARTventures
By
Banff Centre Communications
Posted on
June 23, 2026
Still (composite) from the video A Clean Place to Swim (Ukrainians), 27 mins. Diane Borsato, 2025.
Launching with an Opening Reception on July 17, Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre presents new and recent works by Diane Borsato that celebrate the intimate and liberating possibilities of being in water, along with our shared right to clean, wild environments to swim in. New Family ARTventures events invite families and youth to drop in for creative artmaking.
BANFF, AB, JUNE 23, 2026 – Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is pleased to present Diane Borsato: A Clean Place to Swim, an exhibition that considers how watery sites might foster intimacy, solidarity, and belonging. Featuring video and photography, the exhibition brings together works related to the artist’s engagement with the subject over more than a decade, from the glacial waters of the Bow River to the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto, and to geothermally heated pools on the west coast of Iceland.
Diane Borsato is an award-winning artist, writer, and educator known for her environmental and social art practices. She has worked closely with other artists and amateur naturalists to create the foraging and stargazing action called Terrestrial/Celestial, a performance of silence and stillness with one-hundred beekeepers called Your Temper, My Weather, and planted an orchard of rare apples as public art called ORCHARD, along with many other well-known projects and publications.
In her newest exhibition, Diane Borsato: A Clean Place to Swim, is the work Pools (2014), a series of wide-lens, action-camera photographs documenting her family’s attempts to teach her child to swim in various public and natural pools across western Iceland. Related to this work is the new dual-channel video installation Swimming Lessons (Mom/Dad) (2026) in which Borsato is seen teaching her mother and father to swim in poignant scenes of support and struggle, recorded entirely underwater.
My parents never had swimming lessons as children, and each immigrated to Canada with a fear of deep water and a limited facility for moving safely in and around it. I recorded our lessons underwater to see if we could witness some of their transformation play out, as well as the drama of our relationship dynamics at this stage of our lives. In moments, we alternate between looking funny and over-exposed, or shimmering and sublime, or shrunken and stretched. Sometimes our swimming lessons look like dancing lessons, or flying lessons, or even practice-for-dying lessons. Water becomes a medium in which to be ourselves, and a lens through which to see ourselves in an entirely new, bent light.”
Diane Borsato
Also inspired by the unique choreographies of swimming lessons is the new work Holds, Floats, Strokes (2026), an edited collection of studio experiments led by Borsato with dancers Naishi Wang and Lukas Malkowski, based on the gestures and sensations inherent to learning to swim.
Swimming With Mathematicians (2018), a piece created at Banff Centre, documents mathematicians from the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) swimming together with artists in the glacial Bow River during a heatwave, and invites ritualized repetition of the gesture indefinitely into the future.
Finally, the exhibition also includes the title works, A Clean Place to Swim (Ukrainians) (2025) and (Snow) (2026), two single-channel videos featuring a group of Ukrainian Canadians—some recent newcomers fleeing the Russian invasion—who meet weekly year-round at the West Humber Bay in Toronto, to swim in the lake. Regardless of the weather and contamination warnings, everyone encourages one another to dip into the freezing water.
In A Clean Place to Swim, visitors are invited to reflect on our relationship to the natural world and the fundamental right to a healthy environment. Borsato explores the ways in which environmental health is inseparable from our own and asks how caring for fresh water sustains our communities. By gathering to dip together into the freezing lake, she highlights our connection to local ecosystems alongside a space that demands continuous protection, care, and environmental stewardship.
Jacqueline Bell, Director, Walter Phillips Gallery and Collections at Banff Centre
At once resistant to city norms and insistent on living, the group reminded the artist of Alexander Wilson’s line from his book The Culture of Nature, calling for an environment that we all deserve: one that must have “a clean place to swim”.
Diane Borsato: A Clean Place to Swim
- Dates: July 18, 2026, to December 13, 2026
- Venue: Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
- Address: 107 Tunnel Mountain Dr., Banff, Alberta
- Price: Free
- Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Public Events
- Opening Reception: Friday, July 17, 2026 | 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- Exhibition Tour: Wednesday, August 19, 2026 | 5:30 p.m.
This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Alberta through Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Family ARTventures
Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre is thrilled to launch Family ARTventures, a youth and family program designed to connect the Bow Valley with meaningful access to contemporary art. Families and youth are invited to monthly workshops inspired by Banff Centre’s exhibitions and permanent collections, expanding cultural access to our community and inspiring creativity in one of Canada’s most unique artistic environments.
- Dates: July 11, August 8, September 12
- Time: 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
- Price: FREE
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity acknowledges the generous support of TD Bank Group through TD Ready Commitment. We are proud to partner with an organization that shares our belief in supporting arts and culture events, initiatives, and organizations through the transformative power of creativity, education, and community connection.
Through the Family ARTventures program, TD is helping Banff Centre expand access to contemporary art to children, youth, and families in the Bow Valley, creating space for the next generation to engage with the arts.
The Family ARTventures Program is generously supported by:
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For photos, information, or interview requests, please contact:
Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca
About Diane Borsato
Diane Borsato is an award-winning artist, writer, and educator who has worked closely with other artists and amateur naturalists, including coordinating a day-long foraging and stargazing event for amateur mushroomers and astronomers (Terrestrial/Celestial), creating a performance of silence and stillness with 100 beekeepers (Your Temper, My Weather), and planting a rare community apple orchard as public art (ORCHARD) along with many other multidisciplinary projects.
She has performed and exhibited across Canada at venues including the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Power Plant, and the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; the Art Museum at the University of Toronto; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; the Esker Foundation, Calgary; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the National Art Centre, Ottawa; Fogo Island Arts and at the Toronto Biennial of Art; and internationally at galleries and museums around the world. She recently published Outdoor School: Contemporary Environmental Art (2021) co-edited with Amish Morrell, MUSHROOMING: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt (2022), and the artist book Snakes in the Library (2025) together with Alexandra Carter. Diane Borsato is also Associate Professor at the University of Guelph, where she teaches courses exploring social, site-responsive and environmental art practices. She lives and works in Toronto.
About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Founded in 1933, Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become a global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines, from the fine arts to Indigenous Wise Practices. From our home in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus—artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences—to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca
About Walter Phillips Gallery
Walter Phillips Gallery is exclusively committed to the production, presentation, collection, and analysis of contemporary art and curatorial practice. For contemporary artists, particularly those engaged in alternative forms of practice, Walter Phillips Gallery remains an essential and principal site where art is presented to an audience for critical reception. banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery
Banff Centre
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We recognize, with deep respect and gratitude, our home on the side of Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain. In the spirit of respect and truth, we honour and acknowledge the Banff area, known as “Minihrpa” (translated in Stoney Nakoda as “the waterfalls”) and the Treaty 7 territory and oral practices of the Îyârhe Nakoda (Stoney Nakoda) – comprised of the Bearspaw, Chiniki, and Goodstoney Nations – as well as the Tsuut’ina First Nation and the Blackfoot Confederacy comprised of the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai. We acknowledge that this territory is home to the Shuswap Nations, Ktunaxa Nations, and Métis Nation of Alberta, Rockyview District 4. We acknowledge all Nations who live, work, and play here, help us steward this land, and honour and celebrate this place.