Self-care is focus of art exhibit featuring Indigenous artists at Toronto gallery

Emma Steen is the curator of the Locating Self Care in Urban Centres exhibit in downtown Toronto.

By Sam Laskaris

TORONTO – Self-care is the theme of an art exhibit currently on display at a Toronto gallery.

The exhibit, titled Locating Self Care in Urban Centres, opened to the public in mid-September.

It then had a media preview and official opening, which was attended by Toronto Mayor John Tory, in mid-October.

The exhibit, which is being hosted at Collision Gallery, will remain open until Dec. 31.

The free art exhibit is part of Artworx TO, the city’s year-long initiative to invest in new public art across Toronto. The goal is to invest in art projects which focus on underserved and diverse communities.

ArtworxTO kicked off this fall and will continue for 12 months. ArtworxTO hubs will be located throughout the city during this program.

The Collision Gallery, which is located in downtown Toronto at 18 Wellington St. W., is a pop-up hub.

The Locating Self Care in Urban Centres exhibit focuses on Indigenous and Black perspectives on care as methods of resistance and sovereignty.

The exhibit’s curator is Emma Steen, a non-Status Anishinaabe. A pair of Indigenous artists, Susan Blight and Laura Grier, have their work highlighted in the exhibit.

Blight is a member of Couchiching First Nation while Grier, who was born in Yellowknife, is a Deline First Nation artist. Both now live in Toronto.

“A huge part why this show came to be was because in 2020, when it was the height of the second wave of the pandemic, I was just really thinking about care and what self-care looked like,” Steen said.

She added she felt there was a lack of infrastructure to take care of Indigenous communities.

A massive sign at the exhibit does its best to explain this. The sign asks a pair of questions.

These questions are: How do we care for ourselves? How can care be politicized or enacted as a means of resistance?

“We do not see care as a frivolous want but instead as a birthright,” reads the sign. “The right to feel good, feel safe, and feel held by oneself and by those around us.”

“In a city that so often removes Indigenous presence, through displacement and urbanization, locating and celebrating Indigenous self-care in the downtown core becomes a means of asserting stewardship and relationality for Toronto’s Indigenous population.”

Steen is hoping word of the exhibit spreads and more people come out to see it.

“I think it has been a quiet turnout in general,” she said of the early days of the exhibit.

And one of the main reasons for that is its location.

“You have to be inside Commerce Court to get into the gallery,” Steen said.

The gallery does not have its own entrance onto a street. Commerce Court is an office building complex, located in the heart of Toronto’s financial district.

“You wouldn’t even know it’s there,” Steen said of the gallery, tucked inside of Commerce Court, which has seen a tremendous reduction in foot traffic since the COVID-19 pandemic began and countless people started working remotely.

More information about the Locating Self Care in Urban Centres exhibit is available at artworxto.ca.