REGINA — Visitors to the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina are being warned before they get anywhere near Bruce LaBruce’s work.At the welcome centre, staff verbally tell people about the display now on view as part of the 2025 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. The exhibit is set inside a boxed-in room within a larger public gallery space, with several printed warnings posted outside.Inside are large photographs showing graphic gay sex acts, nude transgender bodies, and exposed genitalia.The work is by Bruce LaBruce, a Toronto-based filmmaker, photographer, and writer born in Southampton, Ontario, who has spent decades building a reputation as one of Canada’s most provocative cultural figures. Emerging from the queer punk scene in the 1980s, he became known for mixing pornography, politics, and arthouse cinema in films that challenged sexual and social norms..“I go back and forth between working for porn companies and then making features in Canada that get, you know, funding from the government,” said LaBruce in an interview for the Teddy Award, two years ago.The Teddy Award is “a societal engaged political award, which is given to films and people that communicate queer themes and content on a large scale and contribute with this to more tolerance, acceptance, solidarity, and equality in society.”His MacKenzie show is part of this year’s Governor General’s Awards exhibition, which celebrates the country’s top visual and media artists. Each laureate receives a medallion and a cash prize of $25,000.The Regina gallery has gone beyond simply hanging the work. In December 2025, it hosted a masterclass with LaBruce and also partnered with the Regina Public Library for a public screening of his latest pornographic film..The programming lands at a time when the MacKenzie has also been under political scrutiny. During Regina’s 2026 budget debate, the gallery avoided proposed cuts as the city council approved continued annual funding of $300,000. The budget included a 10.9% increase for taxpayers.MacKenzie CEO John Hampton argued the gallery is a vital cultural hub and urged the council to keep support in place.The debate around LaBruce’s work is not new. His films and exhibitions have long stirred arguments over public money, censorship, and artistic freedom. But for supporters, that tension is part of the point.Prime Minister Mark Carney said that artists help people understand one another better, “in all our complexity, diversity, and audacity.”
