Dialogues

Looking back, looking forward: Collective organizing in the arts & culture sector

Tuesday, May 25, 6:00-7:30PM
Register here

Long before the pandemic, systemic labour issues in the creative sectors were pushing artists and activists to collectively and collaboratively organize. Installers, artists, curators, arts administrators, and other cultural workers face work precarity in the form of underpaid, unpaid, unprotected, and insecure work. This is doubly true for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, racialized and/or low-income workers seeking job security, safety and access. As these very issues are now being compounded by the pandemic, recognizing ‘artists-as-workers’ and ‘workers-as-artists’ is as important as ever. From advocacy to community building, this panel brings together cultural workers from Toronto, Vancouver and New York City experienced in collective organizing. The panelists will share challenges brought on by the pandemic, issues relevant to their members, and reflections on the future of labour justice. Learning from each other, panelists will exchange strategies on how to shift the balance of power in the arts.

Panelists

Anique Jordan, Artist, curator & Black Wimmin Artist founder
Jason Samilski, CARFAC Ontario
Jonny Sopotuik, ACWU President & VALU CO-OP
Lise Soskolne, W.A.G.E.

Moderator

Julia Matamoros, Cultural worker

ASL Interpretation is available.

Please visit our Vimeo for recordings of past Dialogues.

Anique Jordan is an artist, writer and curator who looks to answer the question of possibility in everything she creates. As an artist, Jordan works in photography, sculpture and performance often employing the theory of hauntology to challenge historical or dominant narratives and creating, what she calls, impossible images. Jordan has lectured on her artistic and community engaged curatorial practice as a 2017 Canada Seminar speaker at Harvard University and in numerous institutions across the Americas. In 2017 she co-curated the exhibition Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood at the Art Gallery of Ontario. As an artist, she has exhibited in galleries such as Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Art Gallery of Guelph, Doris McCarthy Gallery, the Wedge Collection, Art Gallery of Windsor, Gallery 44, and Y+ Contemporary. She has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships and in 2017 was awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist of the Year award. Jordan completed a residency at the University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago), was the 2018-19 Artist-in-Residence at Osgoode Hall Law School and the most recent recipient of the Hnatyshyn Emerging Artist award. Her work appears in public and private collections nationally.

Julia Matamoros has been working on advancing social change through the arts and cross sector collaboration for over ten years. She is a consultant supporting organizations to create positive change with special focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Jason Samilski is a Co-Creative Director of CUE, and the Managing Director of CARFAC Ontario. He has spent the last decade with CUE creating cultural infrastructure for marginalized communities and artists including high-access grants, employment, mentorship, residencies, and exhibition opportunities, including the launch of the Margin of Eras Gallery in 2017. With CARFAC Ontario, Jason is leading the development of projects that focus on advocacy for marginalized artists, high-access resources and publications, pro-bono legal clinics, and resources created in collaboration with Indigenous artists in Northern Ontario. He and the CARFAC Ontario team are working hard to address the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on the provincial arts and culture sector.

Lise Soskolne is an artist and core organizer of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), a New York-based activist organization founded in 2008. W.A.G.E.'s mission is to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract their labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy. Along with many others, Lise is a co-founder of W.A.G.E. She has been its core organizer since 2012.

Jonny Sopotiuk is a visual artist, curator, and community organizer living and working on the Unceded Indigenous territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵw ̓ xwú7mesh (Squamish), and Se ̱ lí̓lwitulh (Tsleil ̓ -Waututh) Nations in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His interdisciplinary studio practice explores compulsion and control through the lenses of production, labour, and work. Over the last decade Jonny has worked in the labour movement as a union organizer and in campaigns and communications roles. He is currently the Lead Organizer for IATSE Local 891, representing over 9000 professional artists and technicians in the film industry. Jonny is the President of the Arts and Cultural Workers Union (ACWU), IATSE Local B778 and the former Vice-President of CARFAC BC.