Festividad en Días Soleados (Festivities on Sunny Days). Papel Picado (Pecked Paper) handmade by Alejandro Martínez Arriaga in Puebla. Papier-mâché (2019). SITE Photography

Little México
Carlos Colín

June 21 – August 10, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, June 21, 7 – 9pm
Cannon Gallery

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) was created in 1966 originally between Canada and Jamaica. The program started after farmers from Ontario needed workers to fill the labour demand during the apple harvest season. In 1974, Mexico joined, becoming the largest provider of labourers through SAWP across Canada. The province of British Columbia joined the program in 2004, and according to the Canada Gazette, in 2019 around 470,000 work permits were issued for temporary foreign workers all over Canada, and 98,000 of these permits were for farm workers.¹ These Canadian farmers, in order to justify the request for Mexican labourers, must establish that there are no Canadian residents able to fill these labour positions.

Following the line of thought and practice of Latin American conceptualism, this exhibition features a series of new artworks associated with the idea of the sporadic diaspora of Mexican labourers that work and live in Abbotsford for up to 8 months a year. The project will explore the Mexican workers’ relationships and connections with their families in Mexico, communal life in Abbotsford and in Canada, their political activities, and the reality of their economic situation including work opportunities in Canada and Mexico. I use the term “sporadic diaspora” to define the constant human dislocation where one or more members of these Mexican worker family members have the need to leave their place of origin, families and communities.

12 hrs. Diarias (12 hours per day). Workers caps used during their labour days, Caps (2019). SITE Photography

Artist Talk with Carlos Colín

Saturday, June 22, 1 – 2pm

Join artist Carlos Colín as he leads a tour of his solo exhibition Little México. We’ll start in the Cannon gallery and then move into the courtyard where we’ll make and eat guacamole while discussing dignity for agricultural workers. This is a free event, no registration required.

Milk It, Catherine Mellginger (2021). Photographic collage, oil stick, pencil on paper. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Out of Sight
Claire Anderson, Bethany Kenyon, Catherine Mellinger

June 21 – August 10, 2024
Reception: Friday, June 21, 7 – 9pm
James Gallery

Claire Anderson, Bethany Kenyon and Catherine Mellinger engage with the idea of invisible labour, reflecting on unseen care in their artistic practices. They explore what it means to care for someone: from the often invisible identity of being a caregiver to a partner with chronic illness, to the physiological and sensory experience of parenting, to violence in intimate partner relationships. Through their work artists show how care-work is implemented in their artistic practice and reflect on how they engage as a community in recognizing labour that is often free and unseen. Artworks explore themes of both one to one and group relationship dynamics, unseen emotional, physical, and free labour.

Trans Lives Are Sacred, Ris Wong (2024). Digital illustration. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Trans Lives are Sacred
Ris Wong

July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025
Cannon Wall Billboard

“Trans Lives are Sacred” is an illustration inspired by and in hopeful collaboration with the artist Kait Hatsch’s mixed-medium embroidery pieces ‘Sacred Love/Sacred Lives’, celebrating the sacredness of disabled, trans, and queer folks. Trans-ness, as the need to control one’s own body, identity, and appearance is defensive, a guard developed to keep from being grabbed and forced into some desired form. This trans reflex of resistant self-definition can extend into an appearance of vicious defense – monstrous tattoos, barbed piercings.)

Trans-ness teaches a jagged resistance to forced categorization and requirements to fit into a fixed spot. Trans people have fought long and sharp for a place in the world to flourish, and so long as grasping hands try to pull them from that place, there will be pricks and barbs to stop them. Thorns serve a lot of useful purposes. They make plants beautiful, resilient, complicated, and protective – they can grasp and climb and defend themselves and defend others and produce safety for whatever needs that safety. Let them grow their way.

This exhibition is part of a billboard exchange between Hamilton Artists Inc, in Hamilton, ON, and The New Gallery, in Calgary, AB. Their billboard will feature “Trans Healthcare Saved My Life” by Jayden Charles, opening on June 30, 2024.

Contemporary Art Bus Tour

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 11am – 6pm
Toronto – Hamilton – Burlington

Hamilton Artists Inc. in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Burlington, Tangled Art + Disability and the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre offer a free bus tour of their summer exhibitions. Please follow this link to reserve your spot on the bus and for full event details Contemporary Art Bus Tour – Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (wahc-museum.ca)

As an artist-run centre, Hamilton Artists Inc. (the Inc.) empowers artists of all career levels to take risks with their contemporary visual arts practices and present their work in a critical context.

We are open to the public on Wednesday and Thursday 12 – 5pm, Friday 12 – 6pm and Saturday 12 – 5pm.

Accessibility: The Inc. is an accessible venue. Visit the website for detailed information.

Hamilton Artists Inc.
155 James Street North
Hamilton, ON L8R 2K9
www.theinc.ca | 905.529.3355

Facebook: @HamiltonArtistsInc
Twitter: @HamArtInc
Instagram: @HamiltonArtistsInc

Contact:
Sanaa Humayun, Programming Director
programming@theinc.ca

The Inc. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council, City of Hamilton, Canada Council for the Arts, Hamilton Community Foundation, Incite Foundation for the Arts, and all of our members, donors, sponsors, and programming partners.

1. Canada Gazette. (2021). The Distribution of Temporary Foreign Workers Across Industries in Canada. Part I, 155 (28), 3850-3914. https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2019/2019-07-13/pdf/g1-15328.pdf