A-Space and YYZ are pleased to present Marisa Morn Jahn and Kwentong Bayan Collective (Althea Balmes + Jo SiMalaya Alcampo) in conversation about art and social change through the lens of domestic labour. Marissa Largo will moderate the conversation and Christine Shaw will present her upcoming curatorial initiative that explores care.
Monday, June 12th, 2017 at 7:00pm @ YYZ
140-401 Richmond Street West, Toronto.
Artist Marisa Morn Jahn will speak about her project The CareForce, a transmedia public art, mobile studio (the CareForce One), and Sundance-supported web series (CareForce One Travelogues) that amplifies the voices of America’s fastest growing work force, caregivers. The project was initiated by Jahn in collaboration with the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Yael Melamede/SALTY Features. Jahns work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Forum, Univision, CNN; presented at The White House, Museum of Modern Art, worker centers, public spaces; and awarded grants from Creative Capital, Tribeca Film Institute, and more. Based in New York, she teaches at MIT and Columbia University and directs Studio REV-, an art + media + social justice non-profit organization.
Christine Shaw, Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga, will speak about Take Care, a series exhibitions, workshops, and publications on the crisis of care, curated by Letters & Handshakes (June 2017 to March 2018). Take Care will feature Jahn with a new commissioned work that collaboratively involves caregivers in Toronto. Shaw is also Assistant Professor, Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Art. Her practice is committed to curatorial experimentation, collective cognition, applied philosophical inquiry, and social resilience. She has been active in collectively run autonomous education and curatorial projects, including Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (2005 2010), and currently, Letters & Handshakes.
Kwentong Bayan Collective brings a critical and intersectional approach to labour arts and community-based education. Althea Balmes (Illustrator) and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo (Writer) are currently working in close collaboration with caregivers and allies to develop the comic book, Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love about the real life stories of Filipinx migrant workers. It documents the leadership and organizing work of caregivers in Toronto from the 1970s to the present day. An excerpt was published in the award-winning anthology, Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle. This year, Kwentong Bayan created a Remember Resist Redraw poster, in collaboration with the Graphic History Project, that examines the 150+ year history of care work performed by racialized women, including Live-in Caregivers in Canada. The poster series aims to intervene in the Canada 150 conversation, and hopes to encourage people to critically examine history in ways that can fuel our imaginations and support struggles for radical change.
Moderator: A PhD candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at OISE, University of Toronto, Marissa Largo is a Toronto-based artist, curator, and educator. Her works have been presented at the Royal Ontario Museum, Nuit Blanche, Galerie MAI, Montral, A Space, and more. She holds degrees in Visual Arts and Education from York University and has a Master’s degree in Art Education from Concordia University and was awarded the prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Largo also works with many progressive arts and cultural organizations that connect social activist art practices with community engagement.