Socially Engaged Art

HOMES | INVESTMENTS

The exhibition includes a series of screen prints, videos, installations and sculptures that explore the dysfunctions of a housing system that conflates Housing as a human right with Housing as financial asset. The works consider the material language of the residential building industry and the agency of skilled trades workers in the crisis. A major component of the exhibition is the introduction of the term "the Speculator's Gaze" which describes a way of seeing that divorces a Home(land) from all the things that make it a Home(land) and presents only a commodity for possession, extraction and speculation. Among other things, the exhibition includes a 15ft tall sculpture of one square foot of the corner of a house, built to a 1:1 scale, and according to Section 9 of the Canadian National Building Code. The exhibition also includes a video showing documentation of a participatory workshop that I facilitated for students in which we built an emergency housing shelter following the design by Halifax Mutual Aid.

I created this work during my time as Pierre Lassonde Artist in Residence at Mount Allison University School of Fine Art.