Ser Serpas

Please join us to celebrate the opening of CAG's spring 2026 exhibitions: [*Ser Serpas: rent*](/exhibition/ser-serpas), [*Douglas Watt: Mayor of the Village*](/exhibition/douglas-watt) and [*Rafik Greiss: Public Image*](/exhibition/rafik-greiss).

All ages welcome. Cash bar.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

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Spring 2026

Opening Reception

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-ser-serpas-presents-lake-mungo-2008-tickets-1984438266274 "button")

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present *Previously Viewed*, a series of artist-curated film screenings. Inviting artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

###  
Ser Serpas has selected *Lake Mungo* (2008).

> *Lake Mungo* is a mockumentary that follows a ghost story and a missing-persons case, slowly unraveling a family at the seams. It presents itself as honest, almost documentary, but the truth it reveals is murky and unstable. What remains unseen becomes more disheveled than what’s shown. Its harrowing, unresolved loop stretches the emotional meaning across layers of family, memory and fabrication. That cyclical uncertainty, the sense of retreading gestures rather than resolving them, feels aligned with how I think about exhibition making, not as closure, but as the re-enactment of a rehearsed tragedy or farce, where value lies in the repetition itself.

> -Ser Serpas 

###  
Run time: 88 minutes.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged; tickets are free. Secure your seat [here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-ser-serpas-presents-lake-mungo-2008-tickets-1984438266274). 

Rush tickets will also be made available the day of the event, starting at 6:45pm. 

### Accessibility
This event will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). This film will be presented with closed captioning. 

###  Biography
Ser Serpas (b. 1995, Boyle Heights, California) lives and works in New York City and received degrees from Columbia University, New York, and HEAD, Genève. Notable institutional solo exhibitions include presentations at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce, Paris; and Swiss Institute, New York. Serpas has also participated in group exhibitions at the Rubell Museum, Miami; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; MoMA PS1, New York; the 2024 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2024 El Museo del Barrio Triennial, New York; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Genève; Bonner Kunstverein, Germany; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero, Rome; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Punta della Dogana, Venice; and Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland. Serpas has solo exhibitions upcoming at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany (Fall 2026) and at CAG (opening April 16).

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Ser Serpas presents Lake Mungo (2008)

Previously Viewed

English Audio Guide | Ser Serpas.m4a

Across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and poetry, Ser Serpas engages with the transient and residual. Performance is central to her wide-ranging practice, with her works manifesting the energy of their creation in unstable and improvised forms. Her paintings, in particular, both depict and are formed by physical distress, their surfaces characterized by a sense of generative deterioration and a deteriorating generation.
 
At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Serpas exhibits a suite of new large-scale paintings: sets of mirroring images made by imprinting or “kissing” one canvas to another while still wet. In contrast to the fleshy portraits in painterly fields for which she is known, these paintings feature a more greyscale palette, dissolving their figures into voids of stained canvas. Flirting in the exhibition’s title with “rent boys” or sex workers, Serpas contends here with the movement of bodies within the narrowing spaces – both public and private – of the contemporary city. 

### Biography
Ser Serpas (b. 1995, Boyle Heights, California) lives and works in New York City and received degrees from Columbia University, New York, and HEAD, Genève. Notable institutional solo exhibitions include presentations at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce, Paris; and Swiss Institute, New York. Serpas has also participated in group exhibitions at the Rubell Museum, Miami; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; MoMA PS1, New York; the 2024 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2024 El Museo del Barrio Triennial, New York; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Genève; Bonner Kunstverein, Germany; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero, Rome; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Punta della Dogana, Venice; and Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland. Serpas has a solo exhibition upcoming at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany.

Ser Serpas - Exhibition Guide - Regular Print

Ser Serpas - Exhibition Guide - Large Print

A painting of a human figure on roughly cut canvas, rendered in a muted palette of browns and greys. ⁠

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Black vinyl text on a white gallery wall leading into an exhibition, introducing the artist “Ser Serpas.” To the left, two white walls create a corridor leading into the gallery.

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A wide angle shot of a gallery with grey concrete floors. A white wall in the left foreground partially covers a painting of a grey figure on another wall in the background.

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A shot of two large paintings on unstretched canvas hanging on staggered walls in a gallery. 

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A shot of two paintings on unstretched canvas hanging on staggered walls in a gallery. A hunched, nude figure in beige is in the foreground. The painting in the back is partially obscured.

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A shot of two paintings on unstretched canvas hanging on staggered walls in a gallery. In the right foreground is a larger white canvas with an imprint of a grey nude figure and drips of paint. In the left background is a nude white and beige figure.

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A shot of two paintings hanging on facing walls a few feet apart in a gallery. A pale grey figure is mirrored in either painting, with the original on the right and an imprint on a larger canvas to the left.

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A shot of two paintings on unstretched canvas hanging on staggered walls in a gallery. The one in the left foreground depicts a pale grey nude figure. Grey and brown paint can be seen on the other in the far background to the right.

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A detail of a large white, dirty canvas with a smudged, barely recognizable painting of a grey nude figure turning as if to look behind it in the centre. Many small wet-looking streaks drip down from the painting of the figure.

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A shot of a series of walls dividing a gallery space into a narrow winding corridor. Two paintings on facing walls are partially visible to the left and right foreground.

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A shot of a painting on unstretched canvas hanging on a dimly lit gallery wall. It depicts a beige nude figure turning as if to look behind. 

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A shot of two paintings on unstretched canvas hanging on staggered walls in a gallery. The one in the left foreground depicts a nude figure turning as if to look behind. The other in the right background is of a nude figure depicted from the front.

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A gallery space with two large unstretched canvas paintings of nude figures hanging on staggered walls.

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A shot of two paintings hanging on facing walls a few feet apart in a gallery. A hunched beige figure is mirrored in either painting, with the original on the left and an imprint on a larger canvas to the right.

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A shot of two paintings on unstretched canvas hanging on staggered walls in a gallery. Both depict a hunched beige nude figure filling the entire canvas.

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A shot of two large paintings on unstretched canvas in a gallery. In the right foreground is a larger white canvas with an imprint of a hunched beige nude figure and drips of paint. In the background a similar figure fills up a smaller canvas.

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A shot of two free-standing walls dividing up a gallery in a maze-like configuration. Two paintings on large unstretched canvasses hang facing one another on either wall.

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A shot of two paintings hanging on facing walls a few feet apart in a gallery. A beige nude figure is mirrored in either painting, with the original on the right and an imprint on a larger canvas to the left.

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A wide angle shot of a large painting hanging on a free-standing wall in a gallery. A grey nude figure outlined in black fills the canvas, with drips of paint and a solvent streaking throughout.

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rent

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present a series of artist-curated film screenings at the gallery. Inviting five artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

Thursday, March 19
[Abbas Akhavan presents *Before Night Falls* (2000)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-abbas-akhavan-presents-before-night-falls-(2000))

Saturday, March 21
[Christine Sun Kim presents *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* (1988)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-christine-sun-kim-presents-who-framed-roger-rabbit-(1988))

Tuesday, March 24
[Ser Serpas presents *Lake Mungo* (2008)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-ser-serpas-presents-lake-mungo-(2008))

Thursday, March 26 
[Faye HeavyShield presents *Of Mice and Men* (1939)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-faye-heavyshield-presents-of-mice-and-men-(1939))

Saturday, March 28
[gabi dao presents *A Useful Ghost* (2025)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-gabi-dao-presents-a-useful-ghost-(2025))

### RSVP
Tickets to all screenings are free. Registration is encouraged; RSVP links for each screening are available through the links above. 

### Accessibility
Screenings will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. All films — with the exception of *Of Mice and Men* (1939) — will be presented with closed captioning. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). 

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Artists' Screening Series

Ser Serpas

Exhibitions

Talks & Events