On April 21, Concordia's University of the Streets Café continues its conversation series on Indigenous and Black voices. This time, the event will explore racialized labour, as well as rest as a form of resistance.
Organized by the Office of Community Engagement (OCE) and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, the public conversation From labour to rage to rest: How can rest be mobilized as a liberatory practice? is inspired by the gallery's Labour exhibition and Tricia Hersey's book, Rest as Resistance: A Manifesto.
As a flagship program of the OCE, the University of the Streets Café offers free, bilingual conversations that are open to participants of all ages, backgrounds and levels of education.
Rest as a radical act of care
Kristen Young, co-organizer and coordinator of Black community engagement, says the conversation is an opportunity to examine systems that prioritize productivity over well-being and explore the role rest plays in healing.
"Collectively, we live and work under capitalism, which prizes us for our productivity and our ability to produce even when we are at our worst," she says. "In contrast, artistic, decolonial and ancestral practices centre our needs and teach us to prioritize our well-being, ensuring we care for ourselves and our communities first."
These experiences often exist in opposition to one another, Young notes.
While participants will be invited to share their own insights, stories and practices that honour rest as a radical act of care, Young emphasizes that the event is for everyone.
"Participants don't need to have any experience on the subject. We encourage people to come as they are to learn, meet others and enjoy refreshments provided by a local Indigenous catering business."
The event will feature guest speakers Katsitsanoron Dumoulin-Bush and Kat Charles, who Young describes as "artists and practitioners whose approaches centre decolonial thinking in ways that highlight Indigenous and Black identity, respectively."
"Their work interrogates the idea of healing and liberation through forms of labour that honour the self and the community, rather than production for capitalism or colonial systems," she explains.
An open and frank discussion
Prakash Krishnan, the gallery's coordinator of public programs and education, will moderate the conversation. He says the evening is an opportunity for an "open and frank discussion around the role that rest must play in the lives of those constantly forced to perform additional forms of racialized labour, which are often unacknowledged and uncompensated."
"Contemporary art, especially by BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of colour] artists, can shine an important light on alternative ways of living and coalition-building that centre our own cultures, histories, knowledges, practices and ceremonies," he adds.
Young says the event also creates a bridge for participants to discover the Labour exhibition, which examines the invisible work of the colonized over time through immersive, interdisciplinary installations.
Curated by Ingrid Jones, Labour features eight Black and Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island: Natalie Asumeng, La Tanya S. Autry, Tony Cokes, Chantal Gibson, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Martine Syms.
Each work explores experiences of systemic, racialized violence through the sequential themes of labour, rage and rest.
The exhibit, on view until April 25, is free to the public.
From labour to rage to rest: How can rest be mobilized as a liberatory practice? takes place on April 21 at 7 p.m. at daphne, an Indigenous artist-run centre in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood. Registration is not required.
Learn more about Concordia's University of the Streets Café.
