2026 McMullen Exhibition

Samantha McLeish

Artist Overview

Samantha McLeish is an interdisciplinary artist and Master of Fine Arts student specializing in sculpture. Her research centres on women's lived experience and her maternal lineage to explore how intergenerational trauma can be embedded within textile practices. Samantha’s work is rooted in feminist theory, personal genealogy, female spirituality, and object theory, and bridges the material languages of textiles, ceramics, and printmaking.

For the McMullen Gallery, Samantha is creating a new textile installation that uses smocking techniques to make visible how sites of pain and trauma are stored in the body. Using decorative needlework to trace an embodied landscape of chronic pain, the artist explores the body as witness and textiles as a means for both bearing and carrying its voice.

Name

Samantha McLeish

Themes

Intergenerational Trauma, Women’s Experience, Body & Memory, Chronic Pain, Textiles as Storytelling

Samantha McLeish, Untitled, 2026. Fabric, thread and nails, 42 x 30 inches.
Samantha McLeish, Where's the Spider, 2025. Handspun wool with human hair, 65 x 75 x 36 inches.
Samantha McLeish, Cocoon 2, 2025. Digital print, 24 x 35 inches.

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Samantha McLeish

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