‘Feeling Along the Edges of Uncertainty’ embraces ambiguity

Union Gallery’s newest Project Room exhibition, Feeling Along the Edges of Uncertainty, asks viewers to sit with the unknown.

Created by interdisciplinary artist, poet, and PhD candidate in the Department of Gender Studies Alanna Veitch, PhD ’28, Feeling Along the Edges of Uncertainty is on display from March 3 to May 9 and combines photography and poetic text to explore how instability shapes emotional, political, and embodied experience.

The exhibition encourages audiences to take their time. Sparse poetry and open-ended imagery are displayed on the walls, creating space for rumination. Veitch’s work centres liminal spaces, or the “in-between.” The photographs are spontaneous images Veitch didn’t initially intend to take, transforming the accidental images into reflections on vulnerability and perception.

In an interview with The Journal, Veitch described uncertainty as a “complex emotion” particularly visible through disability and embodied difference. Identifying as a disabled artist and emerging scholar, Veitch approaches uncertainty not solely as an anxiety, but as something socially produced and collectively experienced.

Drawing on theorist Sara Ahmed’s work on affect, Veitch frames emotion as circulating between people rather than existing purely within individuals. “Emotion is not something we own,” she said. “It connects us to one another and binds us together in cultural and social spaces.” Uncertainty becomes an “affective economy,” shaped by systems that affect us all such as economic precarity and accessibility rather than personal failure.

The exhibition grew directly from Veitch’s doctoral research. Discovering Union Gallery’s student call on the theme “in this economy?!” while developing her dissertation allowed her to translate academic research into art, building a portfolio of research beyond traditional scholarship.

Poetry and photography operate as parallel modes of inquiry in the exhibition. Veitch explained that the show’s structure emerged from her poetry manuscript, organized around the idea of “edges,” both physical and metaphorical. Living with disability informed this framework, taking inspiration from the experience of navigating spaces by tracing literal edges of walls for balance.

Images like an IV bag of medicine and photos taken while last year’s TA strike was occurring reflect what Veitch describes as “intense uncertainty.” Blown up, the photographs retain a quality of striking immediacy that was particularly resonant, emphasizing how ordinary encounters can still bear emotional weight.

Despite its theoretical grounding, Feeling Along the Edges of Uncertainty remains deeply personal. Veitch hopes audiences approach the work with curiosity, allowing themselves to be affected rather than searching for definitive meaning. “Part of doing creative work is to affect audience members,” she said, adding that the exhibition represents an ongoing process of trusting viewers to interpret the work.

Ultimately, the exhibition reframes instability as something productive rather than limiting. By merging theory, lived experience, and artistic experimentation, Veitch offers a reminder that the future may be uncertain, but that uncertainty can still be the site of connection.