They Built for Eternity
Workers Arts and Heritage Centre 51 Stuart Street, Hamilton, ON
The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (WAHC) and SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) present They Built for Eternity*, a group exhibition that shares the stories of migrant construction workers and laments the human cost of labour in the global economy. Borrowed from a 2014 poster by Maryam Monolisa Gharavi for Gulf Labor Coalition (US), the exhibition title – They built for eternity – alludes to both the false longevity of grand construction projects and the ways that manual labourers are slowly worked to the ground. Through print work, performance, audio, film and installation, the exhibition highlights critiques of global building projects against the backdrop of Hamilton’s rich history of labour activism.
They built for eternity places a spotlight on the internal and international migration of construction workers across South Asia and the Gulf. The exhibition opens with facts, with raw visualizations of data by Who Builds Your Architecture? (USA/UK) and the Gulf Labor Coalition (US) that ask hard questions about the ethics of building large global (arts) institutions. Through video, the installed work of film project Behind the Tin Sheets (India) documents how migrant workers themselves visualize the impact of the construction industry on their own destinies. In a commissioned work, researcher Yasser Arafath (India) delves into the affective and emotional resonances of labour migration on both the workers and their families through Dubaipathu, a genre of music that emerged in the 1970s from the migrant flows between Kerala and Dubai. Through a durational performance, artist Bojana Videkanic (Canada) investigates the workings of Export Processing Zones (industrial zones in Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa), sites where imported materials undergo processing by a precarious migrant workforce.
The exhibition is accompanied by public programming; two film screenings and an artist residency. The film Birha (2019) serves as an intimate meditation on the complexities and nuances of separation, loss, and desire, while the experimental documentary Taste of Cement (2017) observes the lives of Syrian construction workers atop Beirut’s skyscrapers. Artist-in-residence Birender Yadav (India) addresses issues of commerce and trade through building materials. During his time in Hamilton, he will conduct research on the past and present of the city’s labour industry.
The global movement of migrant labour in service of capital has been shaped by waves of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. It is no surprise that the Canadian state and its corporations – marshalling slavery, indentureship, and forced labour – routinely use workers from elsewhere to build and sustain its own material foundations. Against this backdrop, we are compelled to reckon with the urgency for global labour justice. They built for eternity is a reminder to listen to the inconvenient truths behind contemporary extraction and development projects, both here and abroad.
*This exhibition was originally conceptualized by SAVAC’s former Artistic Director Nahed Mansour in 2017. Current WAHC and SAVAC staff developed the original concept and artist list to shape the exhibition.
Opening Reception: 13 September 2019 from 7-9pm
Exhibition Public Programs at Workers Arts and Heritage Centre
2 film screenings, artist residency and a performance art piece
Friday, September 27: Birha (Absence), director Ekta Mittal of Behind the Tin Sheets Collective
Friday, October 25: Taste of Cement, director Ziad Kalthoum
Friday, September 13, 4-8:30 pm/Friday, September 27 and Friday October 25, 4-7 pm: Reports from an Export Processing Zone performance by Bojana Videkanic.
Lecture by Yasser Arafath from SAVAC on Vimeo.
Artist Residency with Birender Yadav
We are happy to announce that Birender Yadav will be here in residency at Workers Arts and Heritage Museum from 17-25 October 2019. The residency is organized is partnership with the Darling Foundry (Montreal), What About Art? (Mumbai) and Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (Mumbai). Birender Yadav’s work reflects his personal experiences and memories of growing up in a world of coal miners, labourers and other rural workers. By way of a multidisciplinary practice, Yadav questions identity, representation, the politics of class difference, forms of labour and making, as well as issues of oppression and domination of the working classes.
Birender Yadav was born in Ballia district, in a predominantly rural province of Uttar Pradesh, India. He came from a family of coal miners, his father worked as a blacksmith at the coal mines of their province. Yadav was the first to step out from his family and pursue formal higher education. He first did his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, graduating in 2013. After this, Yadav qualified for a Master in Fine Arts (specialisation: Painting) from the College of Arts, New Delhi in 2015.
Workers Arts & Heritage Centre
51 Stuart Street | Hamilton, Ontario | (905) 522-3003
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 am – 4 pm
http://www.wahc-museum.ca
Twitter: @WAHC
Facebook: WorkersArtsandHeritageCentre
The Workers Arts & Heritage Centre is a fully accessible building.
SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre)
401 Richmond Street West (Suite 450) | Toronto, Ontario | 1 (416) 542-1661
Open Monday to Thursday, 10am – 5pm or by appointment
Facebook: @southasianvisualartscentre
Twitter: @SAVAC
Instagram: @SAVAC_
WAHC acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts for its support of the Main Gallery exhibition program, as well as the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton and the Province of Ontario for its on-going support.
SAVAC acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.