Connect to Care
March 1 - 6, 2024
The Graduate Gallery, OCAD University
The Department of Imaginary Affairs
Waard Ward in collaboration with Nicolas Fleming and Darren Rigo
Connect to Care explores through art-making how ethical care can be practiced about, with and for Asian newcomers in an attentive, bottom-up and reciprocal manner.
Collaborating with two newcomer-focused, Asian-founded art collectives – The Department of Imaginary Affairs and Waard Ward (in collaboration with artist Nicolas Fleming and artist Darren Rigo) – alongside Asian newcomer collaborators from the community, the exhibition presents their collective works of floristry and story-telling.
These works invite reimagination of how newcomers can (re)establish their relationships with the society that they are resettling in, and how communities can connect and manifest ethical newcomer care through a proposed three-principle framework inspired by feminist scholars: (1) Caring about – attentive to newcomers’ voices and needs, (2) Caring with – bottom-up approach and, (3) Caring for – (re)building of reciprocal kinships and connections.
Read the full curatorial essay here.
All photo documentation by Darren Rigo
