Borrowed Intimacy
By Chelsea MacKay
Fingerprint Gallery was thrilled to present “Borrowed Intimacy - a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” by Chelsea MacKay. The show is now closed.
About the Exhibition:
Borrowed Intimacy: A Retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries is a solo exhibition that traces through past relationships, part autobiographical, part confessional. The work is a form of catharsis, moving through love, heartbreak, and damaged friendship. Across a series of paintings, a large sculptural installation, etched mirror, video, and smaller sculptures, the exhibition becomes an emotional archive.
Drawing on strategies reminiscent of Tracey Emin’s candid language and Martin Margiela’s deconstructive approach, the works treat process as both archive and excavation. Frames are scorched or painted white, simultaneously revealing, obscuring, and preserving what lies beneath, from a landscape to a 17th-century needlepoint. Acts of repair recur through materials like cloth, enamel, and metal straps, suggesting both damage and healing, while sewn hair extensions mark the end of a friendship. Hand beading and photo transfers add intimate, tactile layers to a large-scale installation cataloguing past relationships.
These varied materials, objects, and techniques come together to retell a personal history. Creating a tension between concealment and exposure, damage and preservation, intimacy and distance, proposing love itself as something continually borrowed.
About the artist:
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island; lives and works in Vancouver) is an artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent. She holds a Bachelor of Design in Industrial Design from Emily Carr University, studied joinery at BCIT, and recently completed an MFA at Simon Fraser University. Her work is in sculptural installation, painting, and video.
Often drawing on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealism, Classical, Renaissance, Baroque, and religious iconography, her work functions as a vessel for memory and nostalgia, connecting intimate experience to broader cultural narratives through strategies of pastiche and satire.
“You Sound Like Paradise” is an original framed music sheet work by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
A sheet of music stands in for a voice — a sound that can be kept, framed, and revisited long after the person is gone. The quietest work in the exhibition, and one of its most affecting: memory preserved as score. An accessible entry point into MacKay’s collectible original work.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Framed music sheet
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“Faithless the Reason I Stayed and the Reason I Left” is an original mixed-media work by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay: a blown-up concert ticket stub set against silver bubble wrap in a torched and painted frame. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
A relic of a single night out is enlarged into monument and elegy at once. The scorched frame — a recurring gesture in MacKay’s practice — simultaneously reveals, obscures, and preserves what lies beneath, turning a throwaway keepsake into a record of devotion and departure.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Blown-up concert ticket stub, silver bubble wrap, torched and painted frame
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“May the Bridges I Burn Light the Way” is an original mixed-media work by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay: human hair woven to a painted board, held in a torched frame. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
The sewn hair marks the end of a friendship — an intimate material made into a memorial. Paired with a title lifted from a famously defiant piece of 1990s pop-culture dialogue, the work sits exactly where MacKay’s practice lives: between damage and healing, sincerity and satire.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Human hair woven to painted board, torched frame
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“Tres Canes Soli” is an original work by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay: a photograph converted to ASCII text, framed in leather barbed wire. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
Latin for “three dogs alone,” the piece filters a tender image through the cold language of early computing — pure late-90s/early-2000s aesthetics — then fences it behind hand-worked leather barbs. Affection, distance, and protection in a single frame.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Photo converted to ASCII, framed with leather barbed wire
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
An original acrylic painting on canvas (4’ x 3’) by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay, from the Dolorum Ipsum Docet series. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
The series title plays on the ubiquitous “lorem ipsum” placeholder text — loosely, “sorrow itself teaches.” These canvases retell a personal history of love and heartbreak as a tension between concealment and exposure, damage and preservation, intimacy and distance — proposing love itself as something continually borrowed.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Acrylic on canvas · 4’ x 3’
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“Dolorum Ipsum Docet 003” is an original acrylic painting on canvas (4’ x 3’) by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
Borrowing its name from the “lorem ipsum” placeholder text — loosely translated, “sorrow itself teaches” — the Dolorum Ipsum Docet series turns past relationships into an emotional archive. MacKay moves through love, heartbreak, and damaged friendship, with each painting acting as a form of catharsis: part autobiographical, part confessional.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Acrylic on canvas · 4’ x 3’
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“You Taste Like Holy Water” is an original sculptural work by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay: a chromed mirror with acid-etched text, edged in metal thorns. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
Devotion turns dangerous here — the viewer’s own reflection is caught inside the etched confession, ringed by thorns that nod to the religious iconography running through MacKay’s practice. Intimacy and injury, worship and warning, in one reflective surface.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Chromed mirror with acid-etched text, metal thorns
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“Disarm” is an original mixed-media assemblage by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay: a 17th-century needlepoint reworked with enamel paint, metal zap ties, and miniature soap bars. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
A centuries-old domestic artifact is bound and preserved in equal measure — the zap ties suggest restraint, the soap bars cleansing and repair. Like much of the exhibition, the work holds a tension between damage and healing, concealment and exposure, treating its found materials as both archive and excavation.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · 17th-century needlepoint, enamel paint, metal zap ties, mini soap bars
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
“Dolorum Ipsum Docet 004” is an original large-scale acrylic painting on canvas (5’ x 4’) by Vancouver artist Chelsea MacKay — the largest canvas in the series. From “Borrowed Intimacy – a retrospective of heartbreak and other injuries” (2026), Chelsea MacKay’s solo exhibition at Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
Named in a play on the “lorem ipsum” placeholder text — loosely, “sorrow itself teaches” — the Dolorum Ipsum Docet paintings transform past relationships into an emotional archive. At five feet tall, this work gives MacKay’s confessional, cathartic approach its most commanding scale.
Chelsea MacKay (b. 1980, Hornby Island) is a Vancouver-based artist of Anishinaabe and Scottish descent working in sculptural installation, painting, and video. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, and studied joinery at BCIT. Her work draws on the aesthetics of the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside surrealist, Classical, and religious iconography.
2026 · Acrylic on canvas · 5’ x 4’
One-of-a-kind original artwork · Fingerprint Gallery, Vancouver, BC · Ships worldwide · Inquiries: jack@fingerprintgallery.ca
