Common Collective: Claire Heidinger & Natia Lemay

We, the Common Collective, see the lack of diversity and perspective necessary to have critical examinations of contemporary IBPOC art in public and cultural institutions. Although the art world may attempt to be post-colonial, it cannot escape the problematic discourse of racial logic and national identity. These are the very issues in which it tries to work against- resulting in institutions collecting, promoting, and glorifying work that can create blind spots.

We will not allow these institutional bodies and their capitalist structures work to promote the racialized commodity. Through fire and rot, we allow the sick bodies and rotting fruit succumb to worms and insects. Shamelessly excreting the intimate, vulnerable, and grotesque depictions of loss through sexuality and beauty, and destruction and sacrifice.

We are the fruit, grown and harvested from our ancestral vines, nourished by the water and sun of the resilient spirit that lives within us. Our bodies remain resilient, but have been transformed by the violence and effects of colonialism, withering with each generation to come, and depleting itself back into our colonial landfill.

We encourage edification by non-IBPOC individuals and prevent the exploitation of our labour. We sacrifice in a ritual of destruction, cleansing, and purification, to disrupt the continuing cycle of our annihilation.

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