Mayworks Kjipuktuk-Halifax

the effects were cumulative and i almost didn’t notice
2019-05-18 11:00 - 15:00 (America/Halifax) | Nova Scotia
By the year 2100, port cities should prepare for a 250 centimetre rise in sea levels*
Where do our habits – as humans, as workers, as individuals, as a society – lead us? The things we do every day. The things we don’t do, every day. Small actions with eventual results. Time ceaselessly crashes on, and the tendency of it all to add up can catch us by surprise. What do we tend to? What do we neglect? Tides slowly rise within us, the world changes around us, and we forget what a tiny pinprick of perspective we see it all from. How soon we are engulfed. How unwittingly we build our own prisons.
For 250 minutes, performer/creator Colleen MacIsaac constructs an examination of how easily we can paint ourselves into a corner, get in over our heads, alter our circumstances until they are no longer safe for us. A durational exploration of what a long time it can take to arrive at what seems preventable in action yet feels inevitable upon arrival.

*The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2017 report.

Rope Making
2019-05-25 14:00 - 18:00 | Nova Scotia
Presented by Xiaocheng Li & Leesa Hamilton
Textile Artists, Xiaocheng Li and Leesa Hamilton will make rope from discarded shirts. The Fashion and Textile industry create a lot of waste that takes decades to breakdown. Donate your old shirts that would otherwise end up in landfill. This hands on activity will call on you to turn waste into something beautiful and functional.
All of the rope we make will be installed in the Bus Stop Theatre until the end of the Festival and then auctioned off.
Presented in partnership with

ARCHIVES CONTINUUM
2021-05-25 - 2021-06-15 | Nova Scotia
A digital storytelling project by Collective 2030
In collaboration with Restorying Climate Just Futures

ACCESS ARCHIVES CONTINUUM: http://archivescontinuum.onelouder.ca/
Explore each offering in the website’s first layer to gain access to a hidden second layer hosting responses to the artists’ works.

COVID UPDATE:
Archives Continuum is presented ONLINE and can be safely enjoyed from anywhere.

DOWNLOAD OUR PROGRAM APP FOR ALL EVENT & TICKET UPDATES

Carmel Farahbakhsh | Cathy Martin | Shalan Joudry | Calen Sack
Michelle Sylliboy | Liliona Quarmyne | Tayla Fern Paul

Respondents:
Sabrina Guzman Skotnitsky
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Jonathan Langdon
Shelley Price
Designer:
Daren Okafo
Collective 2030 engages in imagining, designing, dreaming their recurrent futures through a multidisciplinary and intergenerational storytelling lens in “Archives Continuum”. Catalyzed and unified through themes of multi-generational and time-cyclical communication, memory keeping, and relationship to land and water — each artist facilitates a response that weaves a dynamic narrative and desire to radically redesign the world as we know it.
ACCESS ARCHIVES CONTINUUM: http://archivescontinuum.onelouder.ca/
Explore each offering in the website’s first layer to gain access to a hidden second layer hosting responses to the artists’ works.

TOIL HERE
2021-06-30 - 2021-07-24 | The Khyber Centre for the Arts, 1880 Hollis St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1W6, Canada
Works From Rural Mi’kma’ki

Presented in partnership with the Khyber Centre for the Arts

DOWNLOAD OUR PROGRAM APP FOR ALL EVENT & TICKET UPDATES

TOIL HERE is a group exhibition and curatorial collaboration between the Mayworks Kjipuktuk/Halifax Festival and the Khyber Centre for the Arts. Featured in this exhibition are works by artists Alex Antle, Antoinette Karuna, Clara Gough, Curtis Botham, Heather Cromwell, Kim Cain, and Michelle Roy, as well as by Mi’kmaq water protectors Cathy Martin, Gnat Na’pi, and Darlene Gilbert. Using the languages of traditional domestic craft and fine art, the artists explore different facets of rural life, labour and justice, and together disrupt stereotypical notions of what rural “Maritime” art can be and speak to.
A video tour of TOIL HERE will be released at a later date as a complement to the exhibition. The video will contain captioned interviews with each of the artists.

VIDEO TOUR

Video by Keltic Kreative
Artist Interviews
Artist and water protectors discuss the art in TOIL HERE and water protection on Mi’kma’ki.

The Khyber Centre for the Arts · TOIL HERE: Works from rural Mi’kma’ki

ARTWORKS IN TOIL HERE
“Pulp Mill, Abercrombie” by Curtis Botham

TOIL HERE opens with original audio, also available as a transcription, from Catherine Anne Martin, Gnat Na’pi, and Thunderbird Swooping Down Woman (Darlene Gilbert). Upon entering and while viewing the exhibition, and online, visitors can hear or read as these Mi’kmaq water protectors each speak to labour and water protection on Mi’kma’ki.
Alex Antle’s Sple’tk is a watershed map of the Exploits River beaded onto a tan moose hide and hung from a scraped birch tree. The River is located in the central region of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) where Alex grew up. This work explores the importance of clean water and the many uses of the River. Both L’nu and settlers have utilized the water for labour and enjoyment.
Antoinette Karuna’s hooked rug wall hangings are part of an autobiographical series. Untitled 1 and Untitled 2 explore the spiritual aspects of erotic love, distanced from the male gaze and existing within the private sphere of the Treaty Relationship, as Karuna is settler and her partner is Mi’kmaq. Untitled 3 examines Karuna’s biracial identity, which is Sri Lankan Tamil (brown) and French Canadian (white), and how despite pressures from monoracial society to choose one racial identity over another, she experiences her biraciality as fluid and complex. Formally, her rugs draw on her background as a filmmaker, mixing the language of textiles with that of cinema––notably cinematographic and storytelling principles.
Detail of “Sple’tk” by Alex Antle
Clara Gough’s life sized figurative basket sculptures present different forms of labour: one a parent carrying a child and the other a depiction of the artist’s father carrying tools. Gough reinvents the traditional basket weaving techniques passed down in her community to depict iterations of labour and the community itself.
Curtis Botham’s Pulp Mill, Abercrombie is a black and white, photo-realistic charcoal drawing as part of his ‘Effluents’ series of drawings that depict worker’s solidarity, economic justice and environmental impact of industry in rural Mi’kma’ki. Drawn from observational sketches, Curtis has illustrated the environmental devastation that can be caused from unsustainable, under-regulated pulp industries.
“Untitled 1” by Antoinette Karuna
Secret Codes by Heather Cromwell is a vibrant series of picture quilts The Dance, Betty Hartley and Grandma’s Hands depicting Black Nova Scotian women, labour, love and stories from the community. This work came out of a project by the Black Artists’ Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS) and the Vale Quilters, where quiltmakers created from drawings made by Halifax artist-curator David Woods, and documented travels to African Nova Scotian communities across the province. Grandma’s Hands will be on view as part of TOIL HERE.
Tilling and burying: Red Earth, Black Death by Kim Cain is a piece about dualities of life/death, growth/pruning, joy/ sorrow. The red earth sets the background for the preparation of the land for planting, with cattle and farmers preparing the soil. Black death is actualized with the central sight of the pallbearers carrying a casket towards a waiting plot.
Michelle Roy’s Mi’kmaq regalia pieces include a toddler’s regalia, a prom dress, and a special jingle dress, in representation and honoring of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit and to celebrate the strength, labour and determination of Mi’kmaq mothers, sisters, aunties, wives, and daughters and the central role of women in struggles for Indigenous justice.

ARTIST BIOS
ALEX ANTLE (she/her) is an emerging L’nu beadwork artist located on the North Shore of Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk (Bay of Islands, Newfoundland). She has been learning and practicing beadwork for four years with the guidance of a community of Mi’kmaq beaders. Alex’s art often explores the relationship between tradition and living culture, as well as the importance of land and water.
ANTOINETTE KARUNA (she/her) is a visual artist working in textiles and film. She is Tamil Sri Lankan through her father and French Canadian through her mother. Karuna spent her childhood in London, England, and later a decade each in Montreal and Berlin. She now lives in Antigonish, where she works as a freelance writer and editor and teaches filmmaking at St. Francis Xavier University.
CLARA GOUGH (she/her) is a basketmaker and sculptor based in East Preston. She carries on the traditional basket weaving taught to by her mother Edith Clayton, a renowned African Nova Scotian basketmaker. Though strongly influenced by her mother’s techniques, Gough has imprinted her own unique style on the craft. In 1998 she began creating figurative basket sculptures inspired by her family and community. Clara is a member of the Black Artists’ Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS), a non-profit, multi-disciplinary arts association that seeks to develop the African Nova Scotian arts community.
CURTIS BOTHAM (he/him) is a white visual artist interested in rural Maritime industries. After graduating from NSCAD University in 2017, he spent a year in New Glasgow’s Artist Residency program where he made a series of large-scale charcoal drawings dealing with the impact of industry on the environment and nearby communities.
HEATHER CROMWELL (she/her) is an artist and quiltmaker based in New Glasgow. She grew up watching her mother and grandmother making quilts and took on the craft in her thirties. Heather is a member of the Black Artists’ Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS). She is also part of The Northumberland Quilters Guild, one of the largest quilt guilds in Nova Scotia. In 2007, she joined forces with several African Nova Scotian women in New Glasgow to form the Vale Quilters Association – a group interested in exploring African North American quiltmaking traditions and promoting the heritage of Pictou County’s Black community.
KIM CAIN‘s (she/her) work explores the African Canadian existence here in Canada and how it relates to the larger global African Diaspora. She has been using Art as a means of allowing an African Nova Scotianess to emerge into the black art canvas for over 20 years. She explains that her work begins inside of her, altering her perception of the world, and through that inward glance her creativity is born.
MICHELLE ROY (she/her) is an artist and Mi’kmaq knowledge keeper, a regalia maker, a mother of two daughters, a wife, a sister, and auntie, and a person living with a disability. She lives off reserve on her ancestral homeland of Mi’kma’ki, the traditional territory of the l’nu – the Mi’kmaq. She is an active community member of Acadia First Nation. Michelle has been creating regalia and artwork for the last decade and it has led her to a path to engage in conversations that bring attention to struggles, mental health, and to celebrate Mi’kmaq culture.
CATHERINE ANNE MARTIN (she/her) BA MEd. CM. is a member of the Millbrook Mi’kmaw Community, Truro, NS. She is an independent international award winning director and producer, writer, facilitator, communications consultant, community activist, teacher, drummer, and the first Mi’kmaw woman filmmaker from the Atlantic region. She is a recipient of the Order of Canada in 2017 and is presently the first Indigenous Community Engagement Director for Dalhousie University. She is a past Chair of APTN and served on the board for the first five years of its inception. She has contributed to policy and institutional change to make cultural and arts more accessible to First Nations artists.
GNAT NA’PI (she/her)
Natalie is first, a full time/home educating mother. They decolonize curriculum and advocate for Mi’kmaq sovereignty. They are an anti-homelessness advocate who’s practice is grounded in anti-capitalist, anti-homophobic and anti-racist practices. For MayWorks they hope to utilize the creative space to motivate residents of Mi’kmaki to uphold treaty and collectively dream of a Mi’kmaq led anti-capitalist reality. You can support their work by donating to water and land defenders in your area, and to the Treaty Truckhouse Legal fund (gofundme).
Thunderbird Swooping Down Woman, DARLENE GILBERT (she/her) is from Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki and a member of Annapolis Valley First Nation. Born in 1965, grandmother and Treaty Defender (water protector and land defender). Clan is Toney, beanstalk clan.

POCKETS OF RESISTANCE
2021-07-04 12:00 - 14:00, 2021-07-04 16:00 - 18:00 | Wonder’neath, 2482 Maynard St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3K 3V4, Canada
A feminist sewing workshop with Emily Comeau

COVID UPDATE:
This event has been rescheduled to July 4th.

DOWNLOAD OUR PROGRAM APP FOR ALL EVENT & TICKET UPDATES

>>> REGISTER NOW
THIS EVENT IS FREE – BUT HAS LIMITED CAPACITY: ONLY 6 PARTICIPANTS PER SESSION
Tired of your clothes not having pockets? Let’s fix that! Join Emily Comeau, textile artist supreme, for a workshop on the basics of adding pockets to just about anything. In this 2-hour lesson you will learn to make a patch pocket, as well as how to modify an article of clothing to include an in-seam pocket. Once you learn this technique, you’ll want to share it with everyone you know, so this workshop also includes a zine and pattern for you to download, print and share. Knowledge is power and so are pockets.
Public Health
Public Health Guidelines will be strictly enforced to ensure everyone’s safety and comfort. Please respect the venue’s instructions for masking, distancing and travel. Stay home if you do not feel well!

Artist Bio
Having earned both a Costume Studies diploma from Dalhousie University and a Fibre Art degree from Concordia University, Emily Comeau has an extensive knowledge of textile techniques that she is eager to share. When she isn’t sewing pockets or fabric masks, she can be found making whimsical glitter art in Montreal.

Workshop content:

2 different pocket patterns will be given to each participant
Participants will learn to make an in-seam pocket and a patch pocket
Participants are asked to bring an article of clothing (pants, shirt, dress, shirt) that they would like to add a pocket to.
Each participant will leave the workshop with a zine summarizing in brief the information in the workshop as well as an iron-on patch pocket.

Materials needed for workshop:
These will be available to participants, but you can choose to bring your own. Any shared tools will be wiped between usages. Each participant will have their own sewing machine available to them.

Iron
Sewing machine
All purpose sewing thread
Scissors
Ruler or measuring tape
Pencil or pen
Seam ripper
Pins
Fat quarter of cotton or cotton blend fabric (approx. 18” square)
Article of clothing that you wish had pockets
Optional: HEATNBOND iron-on adhesive

Presented by

Shortcuts
2022-05-06 15:00 - 19:00 | The Bus Stop Theatre Coop, 2203 Gottingen St, Halifax, NS, Canada
DROP IN ANYTIME: Friday, May 6th, 3:00 PM to 7:00PM (ASL Interpretation)
The Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen St) + Facebook Live
FREE
Masking is required to attend this event in person
Shortcuts are little acts of defiance. Despite what route we are told we should follow, we use shortcuts to find our own way.
In this piece, audience members’ favourite shortcuts are collected, processed, illustrated, published, and distributed by a trio of workers who open up the inside of their factory to us so we can see every detail of this long process to take a short cut.
Shortcuts, loopholes and life hacks. We want ‘em!
Submit your own tips on how to get ahead on May 6th between 3:00 PM and 7:00PM, either in person or by calling 902-404-0616

THE TEAM
Dan Bray – The Courier
Colleen MacIsaac – The Technician / Creator
Mahya Tench – The Operator

Dan Bray – The Courier
Dan Bray (he/him) is an interdisciplinary theatre and visual artist, currently living as the winter caretaker of a spooky mansion just outside Antigonish. He is the artistic director and founder of The Villains Theatre, for which he has written, adapted, and directed many plays. Most recently, his new plays Observatory Mansions and Hänsel und Gretel in: der Garten von Edible Horrors: a Terrible Parable have both been nominated for 2022 Robert Merritt awards for “Outstanding Adaptation by a Nova Scotian”; several of his original plays have also won him similar awards at the Halifax Fringe. He has had the good fortune of working with many of this province’s finest companies, including Two Planks and a Passion, Mulgrave Road, Festival Antigonish, Shakespeare by the Sea, Eastern Front, Phyllis Rising, and Terra Novella. Dan has several new plays in development that are set to premiere shortly across Nova Scotia, but they’re all under wraps for now…! www.brayowulf.ca
Colleen MacIsaac – The Technician / Creator
Colleen (they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist and current Master of Fine Arts candidate at NSCAD University. A winner of the Halifax Mayor’s Award for Emerging Theatre Artist and the Bhayana Invisible Champion Award, they like making things. Colleen’s current play A Beginner’s Guide to the Night Sky was programmed this April at Page1 Theatre’s OutFest, and their past works include TO: THE UNKNOWN, the effects were cumulative and i almost didn’t notice, The Blazing World, Mercury, dark matter, and Cartography. They make comics and drawings and weird little performance things, and they are interested in exploring connections, communications, collaborations, family, queerness, countermapping, climate grief, and our place in the universe. They have worked with many local companies as a graphic designer, performer, producer, and playwright.
Mahya Tench – The Operator
Mahya (they/them) started their artistic journey in childhood, performing for friends and family. Now with a BA and under the Peace and Friendship treaties, they continue to perform, live and work as a multidisciplinary artist near Kjipuktuk (the Great Harbour, aka Halifax Harbour) in Mi’kma’ki: the traditional unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) peoples. A radically compassionate Queer Black, Indigenous, Genderfluid/Trans Woman of Colour, she is dedicated to equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization and reindigenizing. Always an avid volunteer, they sit on the board of the Villains Theatre, the Bus Stop Theatre Cooperative and is a part of the Queer Theatre Ensemble Collective (QTEs).
Favourite roles include: CHILD/TBD in OY VEY! MY BABY’S A THEY (Eastern Front Theatre & the Bus Stop Theatres Writer’s Circle), Gravedigger in ZOMBLET (The Villains Theatre), This Is Nowhere (ZUPPA Theatre Co.) and Potato in Escape The Game (Ship’s Company Theatre).

DOWNLOAD OUR PROGRAM APP FOR ALL EVENT DETAILS & UPDATES

This Body of Work
2023-05-26 - 2023-06-18 | Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, 923 Robie St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 3C3, Canada
Rendering, reassembling, and performing motherworlds
By the sense archive
Presented by Eyelevel Artist-Run Centre in collaboration with Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery

May 26th – June 18th
Opening Reception May 26th, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Regular Visiting Hours: Tuesday – Sunday from 11:00am to 5:00pm
Location: Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (923 Robie St)
Admission: FREE
This Body of Work is an interdisciplinary exhibition that grew from self-directed Artist Residencies in Motherhood (ARIM). This Body of Work explores critical feminist performance(s) of motherhood and maternal agency through lived bodily/cellular experiences and locates the body as the initial source and archive for the labour/work of the m/other.
We have created works that span photography, sculpture, sound, video, text, new media, and performance that consider themes of care, trauma, loss, lineage, identity, emotional bonds, oral/object histories, and memory.
We expose the labour, performance, and experience of motherhood and have allowed it to inform our work. We use a critical feminist perspective to disrupt cultural and perceptual norms. We make the work and are the work.
the sense archive employs the word “mother’ as a verb in our approach and in considering our inclusive and extended audience—an audience that includes all those who mother.
The exhibition will take place from May 26th – June 18th at SMU Art Gallery with an opening reception and performances by Morgan and Douthwright on May 26th from 6PM to 8PM.
The exhibition will feature live performances by the artists at the opening reception and on the following dates:
Friday May 26 @ 7pm
Sunday May 28 @ 2pm
Sunday June 4 @ 2pm
Friday June 9 @ 7pm
Sunday June 11 @ 2pm
Sunday June 18 @ 2pm
About the Artists:
the sense archive is interested in exploring, reading, and transcribing the body as the site of narratives that shape us as artists/mothers. We believe in activating research and artistic work that challenges patriarchal ideations of motherhood. We are focused on, and committed to, creating socially engaged work that values the body and the embodied experience.
the sense archive, Ruth Douthwright (ON), Sally Morgan (NS), and Jessica Winton (NS), are white, cis-gendered, artists, educators, and mothers, living and working in Kanata/Canada. Our initial collaborative efforts are focussed on developing our first major project in two parts—a live performance work and a gallery exhibition—titled This Body of Work.
About Eyelevel:
Prioritizing treaty, accessibility, and care, Eyelevel supports the production and presentation of socially-engaged artistic practices through arts programming outside of the traditional white-wall gallery.
Project Land Acknowledgement:
We acknowledge, honour, and are thankful for the land we live with and on. Sally and Jessica live in Kjipuktuk/Halifax located in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. This territory is covered by the Treaties of Peace and Friendship which the Mi’kmaq, Wəlastəkwiyik (Maliseet), and the Passamaquoddy signed in 1726. Ruth lives in London, Ontario, located on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton Nations, on lands connected with the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796 and the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum.

Change the Rules!
2023-08-22 16:00 - 20:00 | Wonder’neath, 2482 Maynard St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3K 3V4, Canada
A zine-making workshop on labour rights and work in the creative industries
with Marie LeBlanc Flanagan | 4:00PM – 6:00PM
In this zine-making workshop aimed at all skill levels, Weird Canada and Drone Day founder Marie Flanagan will guide participants through making a collaborative zine as we explore our own perspectives on labour rights and working in the creative industries. Participants are welcome and encouraged to bring their own text, poems, artwork, collages, and other printed items, but we will be fully supplied with materials needed to create a zine together.
If interested in attending, please complete this registration form. We will strive to include all registrants but will be prioritizing folks from equity-deserving backgrounds. Masks are required. We will have masks on-site in case you forget!

Labour Rights and the Arts: a panel discussion
Hosted by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan | 6:30PM – 8:00PM
Join us for this wide-ranging discussion on the importance of labour organizing in the arts, cultural, and creative industries with Grey Muldoon, Nailah Tataa, and Amanda Leigh-Zeller. Facilitated by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, founder of Weird Canada and Drone Day, don’t miss this important conversation on sustainable and inclusive work environments, together as artistic and cultural workers and how we can envision better futures for ourselves.
Please register by visiting this link!

Masks are required. We will have masks on-site in case you forget!

Bread & Roses: Can You See Us?
2024-05-01 19:00 - 20:30 | The Bus Stop Theatre Coop, 2203 Gottingen St, Halifax, NS, Canada
English & French bilingual performance | Performance bilingue anglais-français
>>Register Here for FREE Childcare
ASL interpretation will be available

“Bread and Roses: Can you see us?” is an original performance created by visual artist and labour organizer Tricia Robinson Illustration (she/her) and poet and social justice activist Laura Doyle Péan (they/them). This collaborative performance tackles topics of invisibilized labour, union work, collective liberation and the importance of solidarity in the face of intersecting social crises. Building on their decade of community organizing experience within the labour, racial, social and climate justice movements, the two tiohtià:ke/mooniyang (Montréal) based artists attempt to shine light on forms of labour that are too often hidden and devalued.
Live on stage, Tricia will create original visual artwork in several mediums as Laura Doyle Péan recites some of their moving poetry with themes of domestic and care labour, activism, unions, and freedom. The conception of Tricia’s art pieces will be projected onto a screen, allowing the audience to witness her creation process live and close up. The projection of her work will serve to honour the labour and care that goes into creating illustrations, embroideries and linocuts, hence putting emphasis on our understanding of art as labour, as well as pridefully using mediums that have such a rich history within liberation and activist movements. Unapologetically feminist and pro-worker, Tricia and Laura, with care and devotion, are using this performance as a way to open conversations about the labour movement and unionism as a whole, and the importance of recognizing forms of labour that have historically been undervalued, criminalized, and disregarded.

Bios:
Tricia
Tricia Robinson is an illustrator, photographer and labour organizer located in Montréal, Canada. She has been working creatively in whatever she can get her hands on since the early 2000s and has been a freelancer since 2013. Initially shying away from having personal politics and social issues merging with her work, these themes are now what completely encompass her creative work. Her work often adds elements of humour and hope to important topics like workers’ rights, labour activism, the perils of capitalism on our well-being, and the importance, value, and future liberation of the working class. She is a music college drop out with self taught skills and a very strong determination to be her own boss. She also absorbed skills and experience from the abundance of love, support, and skill sharing from her community. Her illustration career coincides with her work within labour unions in Canada, and her drive and desire to educate and authentically empower workers to collectively fight for their rights. She is part of the founding of Syndicat General in Montreal, a new trade labour union that helps workers organize and build combative and durable unions, whether their workplace has 2-2000 employees.
Instagram: @triciarobinsonillustration
Facebook: www.facebook.com/triciarobinsonillustration
Website: www.triciamakes.com

Laura:
Laura Doyle Péan (they/them) is a 24-year-old queer Haitian-Quebecois multidisciplinaryartist, poet and activist whose practice focuses on the role of art in social movements. Laura published their first book, Cœur Yoyo, in 2020. The English translation of their book, Yo-yo Heart, came out in 2021 with the 87 press. Laura holds a column in the literary magazine Lettres Québécoises, and has published poems and short stories in many others. They are also a member of the editorial committee of the literary magazine Moebius, and have sat on many literary prize juries, including, most recently the jury for Radio-Canada’s poetry prize. Born in Nionwentsïo (Quebec city), where they first got involved in intersectional feminist, LGBTQIA2S+, migrant justice and racial justice organizing, they moved to Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang (Montreal) in 2019, to attend university. There, they joined the fossil fuel divestment movement, and made their first steps in union organizing to fight for a better collective agreement for their coworkers and themselves. These experiences led them to gain a renewed understanding of the inextricability of the struggles for workers’ rights and the struggles for climate justice.
Instagram: @esmeralda_dpxx
Credit for the photo of Laura: Amélie Marcil – https://www.facebook.com/ameliemarcilgraphiste

Portrait of the Artist as an Essential Worker
2024-05-03 17:00 - 19:00 | The Bus Stop Theatre Coop, 2203 Gottingen St, Halifax, NS, Canada
NEW: ASL interpretation will be available

Work by Sarah Mosher and Hannah Genosko
In collaboration, Mosher and Genosko use printmaking and textile processes to illustrate their experiences as essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are both professional artists who were employed in ‘casual’ day jobs in sectors that were labeled essential and became full-time during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation and Canada Post, respectively. With their similar experiences they dig deeper into the ‘essential’ label where art and work don’t often intersect. They explore the repetitive nature of labour through the repetitive nature of printmaking, and create images relevant to their experience; the images are printed on the uniforms they and their coworkers wore during their time of essential sector work. Folk quilting traditionally uses old clothes and other found materials for utility, and the shape of the garments inform the geometry of the quilt. The uniforms are sewn into quilted banners that do not follow a traditional repeating pattern or conform to a rectangle, but rather use patchwork and appliqué techniques to create an uncertain feeling. This method reflects the ever-changing and disjointed nature of the pandemic.
Sarah’s instagram is @realpzzazz
Two large quilts on display at the Bus Stop Theatre, April 1st to June 30th
Reception and Artist Talk, May 3rd 5:00PM – 7:00PM

Crafters Resistance
2024-05-08 17:30 - 20:00 | Every One Every Day, 2169 Gottingen St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3K 3B5, Canada
*Time Change!*
May 8th, 5:30pm to 8:00pm
Think of the Worst Theatre Presents:
Learn crafting history and the importance of quilting in community resistance. Help develop three quilts which all represent buildings in Halifax that could be housing. To be presented together at the end of the workshops over a great community meal.
Community Quilting Workshops

Work together to share stories and histories while learning how to quilt! All levels of quilting are welcome, materials will be provided! Come make a square, enjoy company, and learn crafting history.
Quilting will be taught by Think of the Worst members as well as other community members. The quilting squares will be assembled into three large quilts that resemble local buildings that should be affordable housing. The designs are based off of 2277 Maitland St (formerly St.Patrick’s-Alexandra school), 5381 Spring Garden Rd (formerly Halifax Memorial Library), and 2786 Agricola St (formerly The Bloomfield Centre). The quilts will be acts of protests and will be done through guided instruction as well as a place to host community conversation about craft and the labour movement.
These sessions are completely free of charge as we work on small pieces over a durational performance art piece to create something big together!

Drop in Quilting Dates:
Friday March 15, 11:00-12:30
Friday April 5, 11:00-12:30
Saturday April, 13 11:00-12:00
Friday April 19, 11:00-12:30
Presentation of Quilts and Community Meal:
To celebrate the completion of 3 quilted art pieces you’re invited from 5:30pm-8:00pm Wednesday May 8 at EveryOne EveryDay
There will be a cooking session happening from 6:00pm-8:00pm.
Vegan Soup, Snacks, Dessert, and Bread will be provided.
We look forward to seeing you there, celebrating a wonderful space in our community, and sharing a meal. Feel free to bring a dish to share if you are so inclined.

Poster credit: @classicgraphic.co

The Embodied Creation Project
2024-05-12 15:00 - 15:30 | The Bus Stop Theatre Coop, 2203 Gottingen St, Halifax, NS, Canada
Performance art by Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac about creation, embodiment and Queer parenthood
Followed by a screening of Lockdown Baby by Nicole Jordan

ASL interpretation will be available during the performance and the later Q&A.
>>Register Here for FREE Childcare
In February 2023, a person named Colleen began an embodied creation project. Nine months later, a human named Wren entered the world. This is a new performance exploration of how we can use our bodies to create, what queer parenthood can feel like, what we might want to embody in this world. Join us for a joyful, terrified, chaotic and introspective celebration.
CreditS
Created and performed by Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac.
Directed and co-created by Coral Maloney.
Special guest appearances by Linda MacIsaac, Dorian Arcturus Lang, and Wren Arctutus.
Socials
@littlefoible
@coral_mmmm
@villainstheatre

Artist Q&A
The Embodied Creation Project will be followed by a screening of Lockdown Baby by Nicole Jordan and a brief Q&A with filmmaker Nicole Jordan and artist Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac.

Left: Nicole Jordan
Right: Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac (Photo credit: Shila Leblanc)

The Only Wealth Is Labour
2025-05-01 - 2025-05-16 | The Bus Stop Theatre Coop, 2203 Gottingen St, Halifax, NS, Canada
Sarah Mosher & Hannah Genosko
What gives real value to anything in this world? The work we put into it.
Exploring a key concept in Marx’s labour theory of value, textile artists Sarah Mosher and Hannah Genosko draw from the trade unionist tradition of parading crafted banners through city streets.
‘The Only Wealth Is Labour’ by Sarah Mosher and Hannah Genosko is a patchwork quilt banner made out of their remaining uniforms from the ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Essential Worker’ quilts, which were shown during Mayworks 2024. ‘The Only Wealth Is Labour’ quotes a historic union banner created by George Tutill in 1926 for the UK National Winding and General Engineers Society. Mosher and Genosko were struck by this quote and appreciated the simplicity and directness of the statement. With this new banner they moved away from speaking about their specific experiences as essential workers during the pandemic and into a more general call for solidarity and justice with all working people against the forces of inflation, late capitalism and neoliberalism.
Mosher and Genosko’s banner will be carried alongside two of our Working Class Heritage Tours on May 3rd and 11th, and otherwise on display at The Bus Stop Theatre throughout the festival.
Artists
Sarah Mosher and Hannah Genosko are an artist duo collaborating in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. Hannah has a background in printmaking and bookmaking, Sarah has a background in textiles and community arts. Both are graduates of NSCAD University. Their common ground is exploring labour, anti-capitalism and the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic through quilting. ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Essential Worker’ was their first project reflecting on their roles as essential workers at their jobs with Canada Post and NSLC respectively during the COVID-19 pandemic.

my inner child healing my immigrant identity
2025-10-11 - 2025-10-31 | The Khyber Centre for the Arts, 1880 Hollis St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1W6, Canada
Presented in partnership with the Khyber Centre for the Arts and Nocturne
my inner child healing my immigrant identity by Martha Mutale explores the immigrant experience – the self split between two homes. A series of rag dolls where each figure represents a point in time in the immigrant life, softly positioned in space, while the whole assemblage provides a grounded picture of who she is. Presented by Mayworks Kjipuktuk/Halifax and hosted at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, the exhibition runs October 11-31, 2025. Events include Nocturne: Art at Night Festival from 6PM-12AM on Saturday, October 18, and a closing reception Tuesday, October 28th 6PM-8PM.

my inner child healing my immigrant identity is a continuation of Martha Mutale’s exploration of the immigrant experience through the making and presentation of rag dolls fabricated from Zambian fabrics overlaid with printed words. Each of the 40 inches tall dolls represents a different part of her life as an immigrant living in the Diaspora and what it means to hold two different identities grounded in two different homes – Canada and Zambia. What does it mean to call two places home at once? What does it mean to always have a foot in both worlds, to feel unmoored by this dual self? What are the different ways in which each of these places is home and for which reasons?
Mutale was confronted with these questions when she returned to her birth home during her adult life. Everyday, taxi drivers (themselves migrants from neighbouring African countries) would ask her about herself and where she came from. Growing up in Nova Scotia, one of Mutale’s most vivid and concrete connections to Zambian culture was the process through which she and her sisters would continually measure each others’ bodies in order for their mother to sew clothing for them made of African fabric. These experiences and memories, along with her love of poetry, have been the crucible for her ongoing series of projects using rag dolls to convey her sense of identity.
The process of crafting is a journey in itself and the tactile medium of textiles provide for Mutale a method of self-exploration that is both meditative and very concrete at once. For my inner child healing my immigrant identity, the dolls (smaller than in previous explorations) will be installed as a diorama in the window gallery of the Khyber Centre for the Arts through which passersby can windowgaze into Mutale’s life. As Mutale represents different facets and waypoints in her life through each rag doll, she presents a fragmented picture of herself. The soft sculptures each convey a lack of weight and definite attachment to the ground. And yet, the depiction of Mutale’s life as a whole through their assemblage in space, all together, offers her (and the observer) a sense of groundedness provided by the material expression of her identities and the added value of a sum crystallised by the joining of its parts.
ARTIST BIO

Martha Mutale is a poet and veteran of the spoken word scene in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. She grew up in Billtown, Nova Scotia, a small rural community in the Annapolis valley after emigrating from Zambia with her family when she was just under two years old. Her family is based in Nova Scotia. As an adult, she relocated to North End Halifax where she began expressing herself as a poet while also working in the non-profit sector. She has worked as a housing support worker where she witnessed first hand the vulnerability and social disposability of those who have lost their homes – especially immigrants who, without citizenship, are not allowed access to shelters. In December 2022, Martha relocated to Zambia to start over, reconnect with herself and apply to regain her Zambian citizenship. Having been raised in the Diaspora and having called Nova Scotia home since a young child, she longs for her birth home, Zambia, and yearns to learn more about her roots. While in Lusaka, waiting for her paperwork to be approved, she volunteered her time in an art gallery and completed two residencies which constituted her first forays into visual arts. During her second residency, she made six dolls, five feet long, all sewn and painted by hand using upcycled textile fabrics and African materials she found while living in Lusaka, Zambia. Martha is healing her inner child and making room for new and exciting adventures that await her in the future.
HOURS & EVENTS:
Exhibition on view: October 11-31, 2025
Gallery hours: On display in the window gallery 24/7 | Open hours: 12-5PM Tuesday-Saturday + events
Appointments/contact: info@khyber.ca
Accessibility notes: www.khyber.ca/access
Nocturne hours: 6PM-12AM, Saturday, October 18, 2025
Closing reception: Tuesday, October 28th 6PM-8PM – Click here for details
Presented concurrently with No Domain / No Dominion

No Dominion/No Domain
2025-10-11 - 2025-10-31 | The Khyber Centre for the Arts, 1880 Hollis St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1W6, Canada
Presented in partnership with the Khyber Centre for the Arts and Nocturne
Mayworks Kjipuktuk/Halifax presents No Dominion/No Domain, where Eva Grant and Curtis Botham trace land, life, labour, and pathways across speculative digital ancestral architectures and charcoal industrial landscapes.
“Homeless Shelters Before Police Raid” by Curtis Botham
No Dominion/No Domain brings together two artists, Eva Grant and Curtis Botham, whose works reflect on land, labour, infrastructure, and ecological movement. Presented by Mayworks Kjipuktuk/Halifax and hosted at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, the exhibition runs October 11-31, 2025. Events include Nocturne: Art at Night Festival from 6PM-12AM on Saturday, October 18, and a closing reception Tuesday, October 28th 6PM-8PM.
Eva Grant’s WILD INTERFACE is a work of St’át’imc speculative futurism that reimagines longhouses and Salish structures as though assembled from salmon bones. These digital works depict architecture not as idealized pasts or utopian elsewheres, but as living interfaces: porous inter-species networks where technologies and ancestral knowledge converge. Through computational geography and postnatural territories, Grant reconsiders space and place as co-constructed with ecologies, where memory and labours of love entwine.
Curtis Botham’s Effluents and Urban projects confront the landscapes of extraction that underpin industrial modernity. His large-scale charcoal drawings—made in a volatile medium that mirrors the precarity of his subject matter—document the sites of resource economies on Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia and their cascading impacts: inequities of wealth, the precarity of workers, and the hidden infrastructures behind everyday consumer life. Botham traces these environments with stark fidelity, inviting viewers to recognize their own embeddedness in these cycles of labour and consumption.
Together, Grant’s and Curtis’ works stage a dialogue on dominion—over land, life, and labour—and on domains, whether in digital terrains of speculative ancestral architectures or in the charcoal-rendered landscapes and machinery of industrial capitalism.
No Dominion/No Domain invokes the dual refusal of control and possession within colonial constructs and systems. The title, created by Grant, arose in response to the effectiveness of messaging between the blend of analog and virtual material. Through charcoal and digital works, the exhibition resists the illusion of permanence that dominion or domain implies. Charcoal, itself the residue of combustion, unsettles the idea of industry as stable progress, while Grant’s architectures utilize the digital realm to glitch and dissolve systemically oppressive boundaries. Both practices gesture towards knowledge, labour, and survival beyond grids of ownership.
Digital piece from the WILD INTERFACE series by Eva Grant
ARTIST BIOS:

Eva Grant is a Queer, St̓át̓imc-Eurasian filmmaker, curator, and new media artist. She studied philosophy and literature at Stanford University and is the founder of Tooth & Nail Pictures. Her world-building practice hybridizes moving image, animation, game engines, interactive digital media, data visualization, and speculative design to prototype decolonial and capacious futures. She is a former Sundance Native Lab fellow, a BIPOC TV & Film Episodic Writers Lab participant, an Artengine NEW SUNS Worldbuilding Lab artist-in-residence, a Vancouver Queer Film Festival Programming Disruptor, a Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices fellow, an Art Gallery of Ontario AGO x RBC emerging artist-in-residence, and an alumna of the imagineNATIVE Originals Commission program and the Screenwriting Shorts Fellowship. Her work has been supported by Mayworks Kjipuktuk, Nocturne: Art at Night, CFC Satellites, Debaser/Pique Festival, the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, Lay*Away, Black Star Film Festival’s William and Louise Greaves Filmmaking Seminar, and the Ottawa Animation Festival, and her films have screened at festivals around the world.

Curtis Botham is an award-winning artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He graduated from NSCAD University in 2017 with a bachelor of fine arts. His accolades include the Canada Games Young Artist of Excellence Award, and numerous grants from Arts Nova Scotia and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Since 2017, he has depicted the impact and labour of industries in the Maritimes, examining the social and environmental effects of material culture on our lives. He has participated in residencies around Nova Scotia in order to create a broad portrait of the province and its relationship to its land, people and resources.
curtisbotham.weebly.com
HOURS & EVENTS:
Exhibition on view: October 11-31, 2025
Gallery hours: 12-5PM Tuesday-Saturday + events
Appointments/contact: info@khyber.ca
Accessibility notes: www.khyber.ca/access
Nocturne hours: 6PM-12AM, Saturday, October 18, 2025
Closing reception: Tuesday, October 28th 6PM-8PM – Click here for details
Presented concurrently with my inner child healing my immigrant identity

Closing Reception with Curtis Botham, Eva Grant and Martha Mutale
2025-10-28 18:00 - 20:00 | The Khyber Centre for the Arts, 1880 Hollis St, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1W6, Canada
Join us for a casual conversations with the artists behind No Dominion/No Domain and my inner child healing my immigrant identity.
Curtis Botham and Martha Mutale will be joining us in person, and Eva Grant will be joining us via video call. All will be available to answer questions about their works on display only until October 31st.
A brief facilitated Q&A will take place at 7PM.
Refreshments will be served!
ARTIST BIOS:

Eva Grant is a Queer, St̓át̓imc-Eurasian filmmaker, curator, and new media artist. She studied philosophy and literature at Stanford University and is the founder of Tooth & Nail Pictures. Her world-building practice hybridizes moving image, animation, game engines, interactive digital media, data visualization, and speculative design to prototype decolonial and capacious futures. She is a former Sundance Native Lab fellow, a BIPOC TV & Film Episodic Writers Lab participant, an Artengine NEW SUNS Worldbuilding Lab artist-in-residence, a Vancouver Queer Film Festival Programming Disruptor, a Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices fellow, an Art Gallery of Ontario AGO x RBC emerging artist-in-residence, and an alumna of the imagineNATIVE Originals Commission program and the Screenwriting Shorts Fellowship. Her work has been supported by Mayworks Kjipuktuk, Nocturne: Art at Night, CFC Satellites, Debaser/Pique Festival, the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, Lay*Away, Black Star Film Festival’s William and Louise Greaves Filmmaking Seminar, and the Ottawa Animation Festival, and her films have screened at festivals around the world.

Curtis Botham is an award-winning artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He graduated from NSCAD University in 2017 with a bachelor of fine arts. His accolades include the Canada Games Young Artist of Excellence Award, and numerous grants from Arts Nova Scotia and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Since 2017, he has depicted the impact and labour of industries in the Maritimes, examining the social and environmental effects of material culture on our lives. He has participated in residencies around Nova Scotia in order to create a broad portrait of the province and its relationship to its land, people and resources.
curtisbotham.weebly.com

Martha Mutale is a poet and veteran of the spoken word scene in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. She grew up in Billtown, Nova Scotia, a small rural community in the Annapolis valley after emigrating from Zambia with her family when she was just under two years old. Her family is based in Nova Scotia. As an adult, she relocated to North End Halifax where she began expressing herself as a poet while also working in the non-profit sector. She has worked as a housing support worker where she witnessed first hand the vulnerability and social disposability of those who have lost their homes – especially immigrants who, without citizenship, are not allowed access to shelters. In December 2022, Martha relocated to Zambia to start over, reconnect with herself and apply to regain her Zambian citizenship. Having been raised in the Diaspora and having called Nova Scotia home since a young child, she longs for her birth home, Zambia, and yearns to learn more about her roots. While in Lusaka, waiting for her paperwork to be approved, she volunteered her time in an art gallery and completed two residencies which constituted her first forays into visual arts. During her second residency, she made six dolls, five feet long, all sewn and painted by hand using upcycled textile fabrics and African materials she found while living in Lusaka, Zambia. Martha is healing her inner child and making room for new and exciting adventures that await her in the future.
