Wet Signal brings together works by Bret Parenteau, Julia E. Dyck, and Nancy Nguyen that explore sound, water, and image as interconnected systems of transmission. Across recording, performance, print, and moving image, the exhibition considers how signals behave when filtered through bodies, liquids, and porous surfaces; where listening becomes tactile, images carry sound, and water acts as both medium and metaphor.

Sound and image operate in close exchange, each shaping how the other is perceived. Sonic gestures looped, scored, hummed, and pulsed, generate images that function less as representations than as traces, scores, and carriers of experience. Across the exhibition, towels, rice paper, and screens act as receivers, registering sound as mark, vibration as form, and listening as a visual condition.

Moving between ritual and noise, intimacy and interference, Wet Signal invites audiences to listen with their bodies. The exhibition proposes a shared condition of immersion, where signals are never clean or dry, and meaning circulates through wet systems, communal baths, feedback loops, breath, and vibration.

Curated by Cam Scott and Meganelizabeth Diamond

Generously supported by Manitoba Arts Council

BIOGRAPHIES

Bret Parenteau is a sound/noise artist based in Winnipeg. Under Wasauksing Sniper and the initials B.P., Parenteau creates noise, field recording, sound collage & tape manipulation. Most recently Bret has been working on film scores for short & feature length films. Creating the scores for Ste. Anne (2021), NIGIQTUQ (The South Wind) (2023), Klee (2025), & Levers (2025). Parenteau’s physical collage work have been featured for releases with his local cassette label Makade Star. In addition his latest work has been included in local galleries around Winnipeg such as Urban Shaman, Blinkers Art & Project Space, and Rosemary Gallery. His latest work 'Whitesand Stream' was shown at Galerie Buhler Gallery in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 Territory.

Julia E. Dyck is a Canadian artist and hypnotherapist based in Brussels whose multidisciplinary practice weaves sound, performance, and altered states of consciousness to explore the porous boundaries between the body, technology, and the (sub)conscious. Working through relational and speculative methodologies, she invites audiences into immersive experiences of collective transformation, using voice, vibration, and narrative as portals into new modes of perception and presence.

Trained in hypnotherapy, Dyck creates participatory works that foreground sonic imagination and expanded listening. She is a member of Audio Placebo Plaza, a feminist project in radical sonic care and placebo aesthetics, and part of t.r.a.n.c.e, a community hypnosis initiative exploring shared states of awareness.

Dyck’s practice is grounded in the politics of listening and the poetics of suggestion, seeking to dissolve rigid boundaries between audience and performer, inner and outer worlds, the self and its many possible versions. Her recent research moves through queer ecologies, psychoacoustics, and the subconscious as a site of resistance, repair, and renewal.

Her work has been presented internationally, including at the Karachi Biennale (PK), LOOP (KR), Bétonsalon (FR), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), Cafe OTO (UK), Q-O2 (BE), Palais des Beaux-Arts de Paris (FR), Musée d’art de Joliette (CA), Musées d'art et d'histoire de Genève (CH), and Darling Fonderie (CA).

Nancy Nguyen is a multidisciplinary artist of Vietnamese descent, born and raised in Winnipeg MB, Canada. She received her BFA studying graphic design at the University of Manitoba and moved to British Columbia for 8 years to work as a graphic artist. There, she was able to practice traditional forms of Asian art such as Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging), Gong-Fu Cha (Chinese tea tasting), and Sumi-e ink painting, as well as music production. Currently based in Winnipeg, in 2024, she won third place at her first local beat-making competition and continues to venture into music as a way to expand her practice. Her sound can be described as dark, experimental and nasty.

Nancy has always had an interest in reimagining her cultural roots through non-western forms of art and philosophy. Themes of Buddhism and spirituality are explored through her experimental process of making and she sees her curiosity for various art practices, as a way of life.