Thin Spaces: the porous places between at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre

WAHC presents Thin Spaces: the porous places between, a group exhibition curated by Elwood Jimmy featuring artists Christine De Vuono, Justine Langille, Kwentong Bayan Collective, and Sal(t) Collective.

Visit WAHC’s website to view all program offerings. Admission to WAHC is free and our facility is accessible.

Sal(t) Collective, mist to root: labour of land (detail), 2026. Photo: Sal(t) Collective.

Thin Spaces: the porous places between

May 8 – August 1, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, May 8, 6:30 – 8:30pm
WAHC’s CUPE/SCFP Gallery, Hamilton

Guest curated by Elwood Jimmy

Featuring Christine De Vuono, Justine Langille, Kwentong Bayan Collective, and Sal(t) Collective

Presented in partnership with the Musagetes Foundation

Which exiled labours can keep us afloat in times of crisis? How do we access them in moments requiring care, discernment, and responsibility?

Between moments of transition exist thin spaces, areas that are both within and without, here and not-here, allowing for a possibility of profound transformation. These porous places alter arbitrary boundaries and invite new ways of being to be built. Through multisensory artworks, Thin Spaces explores ways of recalibrating our notion(s) of care for one another in between complex worlds.

The featured artists delve into the politics of care work, transgender embodiment, and the grieving of ecological collapse.

Justine Langille, NO SPOONS OUT HERE (detail), 2025. Photos: Justine Langille.

About the Curator

Elwood Jimmy is a learner, collaborator, writer, artist, facilitator, cultural manager, and gardener. He is originally from the Thunderchild First Nation, a Nêhiyaw community in the global north. For close to 20 years, he has played a leadership role in several art projects, collectives, and organizations locally and abroad.

About the Artists

Christine De Vuono is a multimedia artist working with drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, and photography. De Vuono’s work has been shown in London, UK, the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, Toronto, Winnipeg, Ottawa, in her home town of Guelph, and in online forums.

Justine Langille (they/them) is a queer-trans settler visual artist creating photography and drawing on Coast Salish Territories, in the place also known as Langley, British Columbia today. Their work has recently been featured by The Dali Museum, Vancouver New Music, Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the City of Vancouver’s Community Placemaking Program.

Kwentong Bayan Collective (KBC) is a Toronto-based artist collective whose artistic mandate is to explore a critical and intersectional approach to community-based art, labour, and education. In the Filipino language, “kwentong bayan” is the literal translation of “community stories”. Website: lpcomicbook.com.

Sal(t) Collective includes members Azul Carolina Duque and Kyra Royo Fay. Azul Carolina Duque was born and raised in Colombia, between the Andes mountains and the Pacific coast of Latin America, Azul plays and learns through the art-life practices of music composition, clowning, facilitation, grief-tending, and performance. Kyra Royo Fay is a Filipina-American multi-undisciplinary artist, educator, and facilitator living on the unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Nations.

Images (left to right): Christine De Vuono, You’re Invited, 2023. Image courtesy the artist. Pillow Talk (detail), © 2026 Kwentong Bayan Collective, www.lcpcomicbook.com. Image courtesy the artists.

Ancillary Programming

Opening Reception and participatory writing project
May 8, 2026, 6:30 – 8:30pm

Celebrate the opening of Thin Spaces: the porous places between, complete with a participatory writing activation of Christine De Vuono’s You’re Invited, led by the artist.

You’re Invited welcomes viewers to respond to prompts, writing personal meditations on care and caregiving on an outdoor installation of bedsheets. In a world of chaos and negativity, You’re Invited encourages calm through walls of breezy sheets with grounding messages of strength, hope, and endurance written to share with others.

Soanación: Voice as living relation
May 28, 2026, 6 – 8pm
Registration details TBA

This sound/movement workshop invites participants into a somatic and artistic exploration through breath, vibration, and deep listening. Together, we will explore sound as a vibrational membrane that holds memory, receives the touch of territory, and remembers songs, bodies, and land as living relation. This event is informed by the art-life practices of music composition, clowning, and grief-tending of facilitator Azul Duque.

Cyanotype Printmaking with Kwentong Bayan Collective
July 25, 2026, 1 – 4pm
Registration details TBA

Spend a fun afternoon with Kwentong Bayan Collective making cyanotype prints using found objects and light. No experience required, please wear clothes you don’t mind getting messy. Ages 12+.

Acknowledgements

WAHC thanks the Musagetes Foundation for their support of Thin Spaces: the porous places between.

WAHC acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton, the Province of Ontario, the Canada Council for the Arts, CUPE National, Canada’s Building Trades Unions, OPSEU/SEFPO, the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, and Teamsters Local Union 879 for their support of our exhibitions and ancillary programs.

Workers Arts & Heritage Centre
51 Stuart Street
Hamilton, ON L8L 1B5
wahc-museum.ca

Public Hours:
Wednesday – Friday, 10am – 4pm
Saturday, 12 – 4pm

Workers Arts and Heritage Center is an accessible space. For more information, visit wahc-museum.ca/accessibility.

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Image Descriptions:
1. A clay bowl is decorated with a swirl pattern and clay teeth, laying in a bed of reeds.
2. Two polaroid images side by side; one pictures a person in a white skirt standing by a street, and the other pictures a hand inside pantyhose with fingers splayed.
3. Left side: Patterned bedsheets hung between trees blow in the wind. Some bedsheets have writing on them. Right side: A pillow is decorated with a cyanotype of a young child, crochet elements, and images of food.