Careful Crossings

Becoming hospitable.

Careful Crossings proposes the values of care and connection as navigational tools towards liberatory destinations. The exhibition brings together artists whose experiences of travel inspire ethical relations in human geography. These movers tread expressive maps, tracing contours that unsettle forms of socio-spatial organization and global encounter that are inhospitable to life. Presented across three locations, the seven artists document their travel as a critical reflection of the geographical conditions of colonialism, imperial exploitation, and slavery. Where the experiences of familiarity and foreignness converge, the artists seek to make intimate connections to places of arrival and mindful reclamations of displaced histories.  

The exhibition embraces the poetic function of landscape, proposed by Édouard Glissant as the narrative acts that depict a relationship with the full character of land, that is in opposition to an exploitative gaze. The artists use such poetics as a language of freedom. The artworks, in media ranging from sculpture to photography and film, each express a desire for emotional, spiritual, or political connection across disparate places.  Together, the artists contemplate the possibility of mutuality and hospitable relations in places of arrival by challenging the power imbalances that often define human movement. 

Complementary to the artists’ own movement as documented in their work, the exhibition invites reflection on the meaning of our travels as well. Careful Crossings is a wandering exhibition whose three satellite sites take visitors through the city: an ongoing art installation at the University of Toronto Art Centre, along with single-event film screenings at the University College courtyard and CineCycle.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.