Steven Beckly

Handy Work
Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Exhibition Dates

May 1 – June 14, 2025

Daniel Faria Gallery is pleased to present Handy Work, Steven Beckly’s third solo presentation with the gallery and a CONTACT Photography Festival Core Exhibition.

The photographs in Handy Work emerge from a collaborative process between Beckly and his father, a Chinese-Canadian war veteran. Based on conversations between the two about his father’s time as a weapons technician during the Vietnam War, Beckly worked with a local jewelry designer to fashion a series of unique rings referencing the shapes of bullets, casings, and shields, some inlaid with jade and gemstones.

Their surfaces also reveal hints of the natural world: the veins of a leaf or the rippled texture of water. These are based on Beckly’s existing photographs, which have been translated into brass using 3D printing technology. Captured in chiaroscuro lighting against army-green and camouflage-patterned backdrops, the rings appear on Beckly’ and his father’s hands, as they twist and tangle in various evocative compositions.

In the titular image, two bullet-shaped rings worn by Beckly’s father extend the reach of his fingers, which together form a mudra, a hand gesture symbolic within Buddhist circles. Known as the “turning of the wheel,” the tips of his thumb and index finger touch to form a circle, signifying the ongoing process of living and learning, as well as the cyclical nature of existence.

By interweaving military and spiritual references, Beckly questions the connections between these enduring human practices, while examining how hands—and all that they represent—can serve this questioning. Through an intimate engagement with his father, he considers the ways in which images, objects, and the legacies of war interlink us and what gets handed down from father to son, from generation to generation.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.