By: Clara Xu, Peak Associate
The beginning of each fall semester at the School for the Contemporary Arts brings the Master of Fine Arts graduating exhibition, and this year is no different. Transitive and Ever presents the works of 8 graduating artists from the 2026 cohort of master’s students in interdisciplinary arts. In addition to the SFU Audain Gallery exhibition, this year’s program includes various installations, performances, and concerts.
The Peak sat down with one of the artists, Chris Outten, who also completed a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at the School for the Contemporary Arts, to discuss the exhibition and his experiences as an artist at SFU. “I’m an artist from the Bahamas,” Outten introduced. “So generally, the things that inspire me would be things related to my culture. We come from a culture where it’s a lot of play and folklore and just a lot of bright colours and tropical festivities.”
In the art studio, Outten works with painting and sculpture, and he’s recently made forays in performance as well. “I’ve been exploring Junkanoo. That’s the cultural festival we have in the Bahamas during Christmas time. And that contains a lot of costume-making, music, making sounds out of created instruments, like cowbells and goat skin drums.” Junkanoo is a cultural festival that celebrates creativity, resilience, and interconnectedness in the face of inhumane British colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. Its origins come from enslaved people expressing a longing for home and their traditions.
This exploration of these various forms of artistic media will be part of Transitive and Ever, as Outten works on murals and paintings for the gallery exhibition, as well as a handmade costume for his performance on the opening night. His “alter ego character,” the Kettle Man, is his thesis and culmination of years of work in the program.
“He’s supposed to personify a tea kettle,” Outten said, using the kettle as a metaphor to describe feelings of ostracization and discrimination. “When the steam goes off in certain tea kettles, it screams and it alerts you, you know? And I’ve been trying to personify that vessel into human experience. Especially those of marginalized people, and the things they’ve experienced in [Turtle Island], where they may have to remain silent about the treatment and prejudice they receive. And that frustration gradually builds up in the tea kettle and it gets to a point where they have no choice but to scream out.” Outten has previously performed as the Kettle Man in his first-year exhibition in April 2025, which explored the theme of idea-formation and exchange between first year students in the master’s program.
“We’re in transition. We’re all going at different paces, doing different things, and we’re all trying to get our points across.” — Chris Outten, MFA Graduating Artist
On the title, Transitive and Ever, Outten outlined the variety in disciplines favoured by each artist. “We’re in transition. We’re all going at different paces, doing different things, and we’re all trying to get our points across.”
He also described how he grew a deep respect for his fellow artists from the cohort. Outten said that it’s easy to respect artists working with similar media since you already “have an understanding of what it is, what it takes to create.”
“When you get to people who are performers or movie makers or composers, it’s like, wow, I can’t do that, but I see the beauty in it.”
To conclude our interview, Outten invited us to check out the gallery opening. “Come to our show on [September 9], from [6:00–9:00 p.m.], and I’ll be doing a performance at the opening. It should only be about five minutes. So don’t miss that.”
Transitive and Ever takes place from September 10–26 at the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, with an opening on September 9 at the SFU Audain Gallery.
