New Art Gallery of Burlington exhibit looks at pandemic impact on how we work

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Published July 20, 2022 at 11:36 am

The Art Gallery of Burlington has a new exhibition opening next month that looks at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on labour.

The Future of Work: Parallel Economies opens Aug. 26 and runs until the end of the year and examines how the pandemic has affected labour markets, quality of life, and the future of work as we know it.

This is one of a three-part exhibition series presented by the Art Gallery of Burlington (AGB) in collaboration with the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (WAHC)

Developed by the curatorial collective of AGB’s Suzanne Carte, Srimoyee Mitra, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Simranpreet Anand, Surrey, BC, and Adrienne Huard Winnipeg, the three distinct exhibitions use interactive stations, film, photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations to open conversations on precarious labour, parallel economies, and labour futurisms.

The Future of Work; Parallel Economies explores emerging and established diverse economies, radical new forms of production, equity, mobility, and social justice. The exhibition and program series highlight artists and cultural producers who work within solidarity economies, focus on mutual aid, and actively formulate anti-capitalist methods of working.

Featured artists and groups include:

  • Christina Battle
  • Jeffrey Gibson
  • Derya Akay
  • Jen Delos Reyes & June Ahn
  • Jeneen Frei Njootli, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Chandra Melting Tallow & Tania Willard
  • Justseeds
  • GUDSKUL
  • Gendai Gallery
  • Works-in-Progress
  • Burlington Public Library
  • The Pink Project
  • Brock University Department of Labour Studies

Running concurrently at the Workers Art and Heritage Centre, The Future of Work; Precarious Labour by Mitra and Anand examines the forces that give rise to a multitude of unstable, precarious, and hazardous work and the invisibility of the people that do this work.

The series will finish with Future of Work: Labour Futurisms, an exhibition influenced by Afro and Indigenous futurisms and Anishinaabe creation stories. Huard looks to both utopian and dystopian future possible realities of future work and work life, as well as the balance between capital, industry, and environment.

For more information about the show or the gallery, visit their website.