Procession
A public procession inaugurated The Tenant tracing the route from Chabanel to Centre Clark. As more artists have been forced out of their studios in the Mile End, artists have moved north of Highway 40 to the Chabanel district. This increased demand is causing rent at Chabanel to increase, and consequently textile workers who moved up to Chabanel from the Mile End in the 1990’s have now begun to move out of Chabanel, leaving equipment, rolls of fabric, unsold wares and other sundry items behind.
I invited artists who moved their studio spaces from the de Gaspé building (the site of my exhibition) to Chabanel to join in a walking procession from Chabanel back to Clark. During this walk we transported a selection of detritus abandoned by textile shops that had already moved out of Chabanel. This walk reversed the trajectory of the previous cycle of displacement, mapping the pattern of movement and cycles of class displacement in reverse. In being transported in this performative manner, the objects were doubly-charged both as artifacts of the displaced garment industry and its parallel exodus from the Mile End, and as the artifacts of the procession as a performance enacted by the assembled artists. The procession involved nine other artists, lasted a duration of two hours and covered a distance of 5.5 kilometers.
Participating artists: Celia Perrin-Sidarous, John Player, Juan Ortiz-Apuy, Sarah Pupo, Valérie Blass, Caroline Mauxion, Karen Kraven, Matt Shane, Cynthia Girard-Renard.