FIGHTING SCUM
MAY 1 – May 30, 2020
Whippersnapper Gallery
594 Dundas St W
A multi-arts exhibition, Fighting Scum scrapes against the layers of estrangement and loss experienced by immigrant workers.
Florence Yee’s installation, gentle reminders to kill your enemies and destroy your rapists, is an assemblage of found domestic objects and embroidered textiles. An abandoned apron haunts Yee’s installation. Its inscription: “I want to skim the scum,” is a thing her grandmother often says while preparing soup. Hanging from a dislodged sink, a millennial-pink wash rag reads, “wring it harder”. And draped from a small table-stool that holds a patterned bowl and a pair of chopsticks, a sunny tablecloth is lettered with the phrase, “Máán máán ha go-slowly”.
There are experiences the artist wants to share with her grandmother but cannot. Refusing the binary between speaking up and remaining silent, Yee shapes her grandmother’s cooking, cleaning and eating mantras into guidance she so wants and needs.
Signalling the inventive ways women and gender-queer people contend with violence, Yee’s sculptures also offer ‘gentle reminders’ of the feminized labour that sustains us.
Juxtaposed against the private landscape of Yee’s work, the short film Money Moves documents a public performance staged in Scarborough grocery stores. Its protagonists, En Lai Mah and Kaiful Bao, make the mundane movements of mopping floors and stocking shelves into acts of resistance; illuminating the toll of wage theft on the body.
Developed by Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts, produced directed by Nayani Thiyagarajah, directed by Yasmine Mathurin, and supported by labour organizers from the Chinese Canadian National Council’ in Toronto, Money Moves, like Yee’s work, invites audiences to consider the challenges and possibilities of intergenerational collaboration in spaces of art-making and social movement organizing.
Curated by Farrah Miranda
Artists:
Florence Yee (visual arts)
En Lai Mah (performance and choreography)
Kaifu Bao (performer, grocery worker, community organizer)
V.T. Nayani
Yasmine Mathurin (filmmakers).
