The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery is pleased to present Labour, an interdisciplinary exhibition curated by Ingrid Jones. Foregrounding the often-invisible work demanded of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities within white supremacist and colonial systems, Labour brings together powerful works that examine how this unseen labour might be unburdened and even shifted onto the dominant.

Transforming the gallery into a suite of immersive rooms, the exhibition spaces are organized around the intersecting themes of labour, rage, and rest. Across video, sound, text, installation, and sculpture, the featured works expose how white supremacy manifests through institutional power structures while proposing alternative modes of relation grounded in refusal, care, and solidarity. Inspired by Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: an American Lyric, Jones poses urgent questions: What are the motivations behind institutional inclusion? Who has the authority 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?

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication, designed by House9, featuring an award-winning curatorial essay by Jones, a newly commissioned text by art historian Gabrielle Moser, and documentation of each artist’s work.

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University is committed to researching, exhibiting, documenting and disseminating contemporary art in a local, national and international context.