To represent architecture in a museum show is a famously tricky task. But a current exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto takes that riddle and twists it into a conceptual Mobius strip. Impostor Cities captures the ways in which Canadian architecture appears on film—the instances when the country’s buildings have shown up in television or movies as alien citadels, the CIA headquarters, or midcentury Baltimore.

The show opened this month at MOCA Toronto as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival; it runs through July 22. And despite its arch framing, it delivers a visual and conceptual punch. Occupying the third floor of MOCA’s building, Impostor Cities skillfully draws out how a single building can change the atmosphere of a dozen scenes.