Inspired by Claudia Rankine’s scholarship on microaggressions in Citizen: An American Lyric and themes of perceptibility, Labour seeks to unveil the invisible labour of the colonized. The exhibition challenges societal racial biases through the lens of Blackness and Indigeneity, exploring, among other concerns, how unseen labour might be unburdened and shifted onto the dominant. The evocative works of Natalie Asumeng, La Tanya S. Autry, Tony Cokes, Chantal Gibson, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Martine Syms examine white supremacy’s manifestation in institutional power paradigms and its corrosive effects on Black and Indigenous people and people of colour (BIPOC). In so doing, this exhibition operationalizes and reveals unseen labour while activating alternative teachings from Black and Indigenous perspectives. Labour asks, what are the motivations for our inclusion in institutional spaces? Who has the right to tell our stories? What is our right to rage in the face of microaggressions and discriminatory acts? And how can we employ much-needed rest as a form of resistance? By reimagining how the colonized perceive, engage with, and ultimately challenge the forces that shape our world, Labour becomes a powerful site of defiance. 

The exhibition Labour was first presented by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto in 2025.