Join us for a conversation with artist Jesse Mockrin and Adam Harris Levine, Associate Curator of European Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, to discuss her career, her process, and the inspirations behind her critically acclaimed solo exhibition Echo at the AGO. 

The conversation offers insight into a practice that brings historical imagery into the present moment. Through her paintings, Mockrin recomposes details from European renaissance and baroque  works through a contemporary, feminist lens. Rather than simply retelling familiar stories, she reconfigures figures such as Bathsheba, Daphne, and Eve, creating works that feel rooted in classical painting while exploring urgent questions of gender, power, and representation. Alongside her dialogue with art history, Mockrin’s practice also reaches into contemporary culture, including a recent portrait of Billie Eilish for Vogue.
This is an exciting opportunity to hear from an artist whose work redefines visual storytelling and makes history feel immediate. 

About the speakers

Jesse Mockrin is a Philadelphia-based artist. Her luminous oil paintings extract details from European Old Master paintings, reformulating and recontextualizing cultural narratives and art historical motifs to speak to the present. For Mockrin, these paintings and stories function as an entry point into an ongoing conversation about images, time, appropriation, and gender constructs. 

Adam Harris Levine is Associate Curator, European Art at the AGO. He is a specialist in medieval and renaissance sculpture and decorative arts.  Echo is his first contemporary exhibition.