Exhibition on Pandemic Isolation Opens at NAC

Roxanne Lafleur spent the pandemic doing what many of us did—taking long walks to maintain sanity. The difference: she was documenting everything, turning observations into art.

Her exhibition "Confinement (2024-2025)" opens at the National Arts Centre and runs through November. The show features twenty-four folded and small square inkjet prints, each one a snapshot of a moment Lafleur captured during her almost-daily walks along the Rideau Canal. The work explores fragility, survival, resilience, isolation, and the tensions between nature and culture.

There's something quietly powerful about an artist turning pandemic walks into public work. During lockdown, walking became a form of meditation and protest simultaneously—a way to reclaim physical space when the world felt compressed. Lafleur's lens found poetry in that reclamation.

The pieces are intimate in scale but large in feeling. You're meant to move close, to examine details, to understand what pulled her attention during those strange months. The canal itself becomes a character—sometimes a refuge, sometimes a reminder of what was happening beyond the trail.

The exhibition is in-person and free to explore during NAC hours. Whether you spent the pandemic on that exact trail or you're just looking for work that speaks to collective memory, this one's worth the visit. Art that processes shared trauma often hits harder than we expect.