Artists: Natalie Asumeng, La Tanya S. Autry, Tony Cokes, Chantal Gibson, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Martine Syms

Inspired by Claudia Rankine’s scholarship on microaggressions in Citizen: An American Lyric and themes of perceptibility, Labour seeks to unveil the invisible labour of the colonized. The exhibition challenges societal racial biases through the lens of Blackness and Indigeneity, exploring, among other concerns, how unseen labour might be unburdened and shifted onto the dominant. The evocative works of Natalie Asumeng, La Tanya S. Autry, Tony Cokes, Chantal Gibson, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Martine Syms examine white supremacy’s manifestation in institutional power paradigms and its corrosive effects on Black and Indigenous people and people of colour. In so doing, this exhibition operationalizes and reveals unseen labour while activating alternative teachings from Black and Indigenous perspectives. Labour asks, what are the motivations for our inclusion in institutional spaces? Who has the right to tell our stories? What is our right to rage in the face of microaggressions and discriminatory acts? And how can we employ much-needed rest as a form of resistance? Featuring an electrifying mix of audio, video, textual, and immersive works, Labour creates a powerful sensory experience that disrupts conventional narratives. By reimagining how the colonized perceive, engage with, and ultimately challenge the forces that shape our world, Labour becomes a powerful site of defiance.

Images by C. Gibson: Epigraph: Still Life with Black Girl, Theory, White Folks and Fruit (2024) and Swatch Book with Self-Regulation and Pinking Shears (2024). 

Artists: Nura Ali, Aleesa Cohene, Darija Radakovic, Chantal Gibson, Jeannie Mah, Esmaa Mohamoud, Nurgul Rodriguez, Marigold Santos, Farihah Shah, Florence Yee, Jin-me Yoon and Shellie Zhang.

The exhibition is presented in partnership with the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Human Capital presents work that offers insight into the impact of Canada’s immigration policies and history: how it treats humans as capital, and the role it plays in shaping the complex and contested formation of a “Canadian identity.”

Canada, like most Western nations, has a long history of immigration campaigns that promise economic prosperity to both the state and immigrants. As a result, Canadian immigration policies have historically focused on maximizing economic contributions while minimizing disruption to the “fundamental character of the Canadian population,” as remarked by Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1947.  

Canada’s current, points-based immigration system, in place since 1967, attempts to provide a non-discriminatory framework for assessing individuals and collectives and directing them to strategic economic and geographic sectors. Once inside Canada, new immigrants are expected to boost the country’s economy by producing more for less. The system has little regard for existing marginalized communities, as it continues to reinforce “Canadian values” with an ever-growing intake of immigrants, whose admittance is driven primarily by the economic demands of the country. For all these reasons, the exhibition asks: What else is lost when human potential is measured as units of capital? 

Presented as a gallery and online exhibition, Nostalgia Interrupted highlights the reminiscence and perseverance of BIPOC communities through lens-based media, text, and installation. Eschewing whitewashed notions of sanguine sentimentalism as portrayed by a dominant hierarchy, this exhibition explores the aspirations, resistance, and heartbreak of marginalized communities within the context of systemic racism, xenophobia, and oppression.

Nostalgia Interrupted offers space for marginalized communities to share the memories, heritage, and experiences which shape their reality. This is vital not for explanation or debate — for the marginalized need not justify their presence — but for reclamation and resistance.

Works in the DMG by Chantal Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Howardena Pindell, Dima Srouji, and Shellie Zhang