We are ten thousand hands that plant seeds

Megan Feheley, sunrise part 2 (detail), 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.

We are ten thousand hands that plant seeds

Megan Feheley, Maureen Gruben, Sharmistha Kar, Gloria Martinez-Granados, Soledad Fátima Muñoz, and Nazzal Studio

Curated by Abedar Kamgari

June 7 – October 5, 2025
Exhibition Reception: Saturday, June 21, 2 – 4pm
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

Borrowing its title from the last poem written by Chilean singer and activist Victor Jara, this exhibition brings together artists who respond to their lived or inherited experiences of colonialism, displacement, and genocide. The artists draw on the “language of textiles” to communicate—through the body—what cannot be expressed in words. Their artworks are alive and an integral part of cultural, social, and political movements for reclaiming and remembering buried histories, refusing displacement and disappearance, and building towards liberation.

The artists use materials with symbolic resonance which carry stories of the land, its people, and their labour. In doing so, their projects point to the bloody footprint of extractive capitalism across the globe. The everyday familiarity of textiles articulates the weight of holding injustice and grief, but more importantly, the undeniable power of collective resistance and hope.

Learn more about the exhibiting artists.

Co-presented by SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG).

Nazzal Studio, Gold Jerusalem Jacket, 2023. Photo: Zaid Allozi.

Exhibition Reception
Saturday, June 21, 2:00 – 4:00pm

Join SAVAC for an exhibition tour, art activities, and refreshments to celebrate the launch of the show. Lunch bites will be served throughout the afternoon, and RMG’s beautiful backyard will be open. Artists will be in attendance.

Need a ride? Hop on the Free Art Bus from Toronto/Scarborough to Oshawa.
Departing Toronto at 11:45am, returning at 5:45pm.

Exhibition tour with curator Abedar Kamgari
1:45 – 2:20pm (arrive early to participate!)

Sites of Solidarity and Resistance
Hands-on arts activity for kids and adults led by Nimra Bandukwala
2:00 – 4:00pm

This drop-in session will explore sites of solidarity and resistance from collective cultural memory using natural materials gathered by the artist. Guided by the prompts: What has this land witnessed? What does this land remember? Participants are invited to reflect and place a hope, wish or prayer for the land and its human and more-than-human stewards on a mannat tree.

Nimra Bandukwala (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary Ecological Artist and community-engaged arts facilitator based in Cambridge, on unceded Attawandaron, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territory. She was born and raised in Karachi and comes from a lineage of women who crafted with what they had, appreciated and grew plants, and valued the lives and stories of materials. She creates paints, dyes, and sculptural pieces with plants, rocks, and shells while exploring cultural and interspecies collaboration with these materials. Her paintings are inspired by motifs from her homeland and folktales from the desert.

Location and Accessibility

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery
72 Queen Street
Oshawa, ON L1H 3Z3
info@rmg.on.ca
905-576-3000

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is wheelchair accessible with an elevator. Admission to the gallery and all public programming is free. Parking is free on weekends. Detailed accessibility information.

About SAVAC

SAVAC is a not-for-profit, artist-run centre in Canada dedicated to cultivating the practices of artists of colour by curating and exhibiting their work, providing mentorship, and creating a community for our artists. SAVAC supports work that (in)directly addresses the ways histories of people of colour are represented alongside the story of ongoing colonialism on Turtle Island and post-colonial histories of the Global South. These works are challenging, experimental and offer multifarious perspectives on the contemporary world.

For over 20 years, SAVAC has operated without a gallery space as an explicit, political choice. SAVAC partners with galleries, institutions and museums to integrate artists and curators of colour into the curatorial and programming practices of those institutions.

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SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre)
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 450
Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8
Canada
www.savac.net
info@savac.net
+1 416 542 1661