Cry Baby Gallery
Cry Baby Gallery, Toronto
Cry Baby Gallery is a contemporary art space on Dundas West in Toronto, dedicated to showcasing emerging and established artists through rotating exhibitions, cultural events, and creative collaborations. Rooted in community and experimentation, with a hidden cocktail bar in the back, the gallery brings together art, conversation, and nightlife in a uniquely Toronto setting.
Proposal
Bringing together three distinct artistic practices, the exhibition explores the ways memory, structure, movement, and interaction shape our understanding of space and self.
Through sculpture, abstraction, geometry, and functional design, the artists each investigate how feeling can be preserved, translated, and experienced across time. Tamara “Solem” Al-Issa draws from the architecture and rituals of SWANA and Southeast Asia, creating sculptural forms that hold memory like fragments of Home—spaces both remembered and imagined. Giorgio Cecatto (Cek) merges Minimalist sensibilities with contemporary technology, using geometric systems and pen plotting to construct dimensional works that balance precision with illusion. Mony Zakhour approaches painting and mural work through layered movement and controlled chaos, building compositions where abstraction, line, and form coexist in tension and harmony.
Together, the three artists create a dialogue between nostalgia and futurism, softness and structure, intuition and design—offering a shared visual language where multiple identities, timelines, and perspectives can exist at once.
Tamara “Solem” Al-Issa is a Syrian/Filipina Toronto-based sculptural artist with a focus on conveying preservation of time. 1. Solem’s work pulls from memories of the architecture and practices within SWANA and Southeast Asia through exploring familiar shapes, colours and textures from these regions in which she found comfort.
Mony Zakhour is a Lebanese-Canadian self-taught artist and curator, born and raised in Nova Scotia to immigrant Lebanese parents and entrepreneurs. His multidisciplinary practice spans contemporary abstraction across canvas and large-scale murals, rooted in an evolving visual language that merges movement, form, and layered complexity. What began with explorations in portraiture and urban landscapes has developed into a distinctive style of “designed chaos,” where dynamic shapes, refined line work, and nuanced shading coexist in balance. Zakhour has exhibited extensively across Toronto, presenting solo exhibitions alongside numerous group shows in prominent galleries. Over the past six years, he has also played an active curatorial role at Cry Baby Gallery, contributing to the development of emerging and established artists while helping shape a dynamic and accessible exhibition program within the city.
Giorgio cecatto (cek), an Italian architect turned Toronto-based artist, fuses Minimalism with modern tech. Initially known for his sculptural concrete designs, he’s now mastering the pen plotter, transforming his geometric passion into intricate line art. His work is heavily influenced by Russian Constructivist artists, particularly in their portrayal of three-dimensional geometric bursts. This exploration is brought to life through the precise use of a pen plotter, merging traditional influences with contemporary techniques.