For Baby Blue Benzo Beta Sara Cwynar transforms Floor 2 of MOCA Toronto into a hybrid theatre, photo studio, and showroom. Working across photography, film, performance, and a collage-like treatment of space, she disassembles images to reveal the power they exert over personal and collective imagination.

The Canadian premiere of Baby Blue Benzo (2024) anchors the exhibition. It begins with the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, the most expensive car ever sold at auction, and expands into a research film about the arbitrariness of value and its production. The film also links “Benz” to benzodiazepines—medications commonly prescribed for anxiety and insomnia. Original, stock, and AI-generated imagery scrolls forward and backward, mirroring the relentless feed of daily life. Visible seams and awkward glitches hint at the burden of images and their false promises. Playing within a former auto factory, MOCA’s current home, the film draws pointed connections between photography and its role in manufacturing illusion and advancing capitalism.

Also presented for the first time in Canada, Alpha/Alphabet (2025/26) reconfigures the gallery through custom modular panels inspired by Aby Warburg’s unfinished Mnemosyne Atlas (1925–29). Pulled from terms searched frequently online and Cwynar’s own browsing history, words and phrases like “disinformation,” “new woman,” “plastic,” “wrestle,” and “youth” are translated into visual form. Extending Warburg’s method, Cwynar records recent cultural memory by indexing our collective search for meaning.