Little México

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) was created in 1966 originally between Canada and Jamaica. The program started after farmers from Ontario needed workers to fill the labour demand during the apple harvest season. In 1974, Mexico joined the program, becoming the largest provider of labourers through SAWP across Canada. The province of British Columbia joined the program in 2004, and according to the Canada Gazette, in 2019 around 470,000 work permits were issued for temporary foreign workers all over Canada, and 98,000 of these permits were for farm workers*. These Canadian farmers, in order to justify the request for Mexican labourers, must establish that there are no Canadian residents able to fill these labour positions.

Following the line of thought and practice of Latin American conceptualism, this exhibition proposal consists of creating a series of new artworks associated with the idea of the sporadic diaspora of Mexican labourers that work and live in Abbotsford for up to 8 months a year. The project will explore the Mexican workers’ relationships and connections with their families in Mexico, communal life in Abbotsford and in Canada, their political activities, and the reality of their economic situation including work opportunities in Canada and Mexico. Colín uses the term “sporadic diaspora” to define the constant human dislocation where one or more members of these Mexican worker family members have the need to leave their place of origin, families and communities.

As a Mexican, and Latin American artist, my socio-political and decolonial practical-theoretical artistic and pedagogical approach draws from Latin American, Indigenous, history, art, and interdisciplinary studies. My working methodology has developed from my work as an artist, researcher, and educator. The majority of my research consists of archival, museological, on-site research in Latin America, Latin American Indigenous and colonial expanded fields of knowledge, modern cities, and migration. In this way, the aim of my research, both practical and theoretical, is to shed light on contemporary Mexican and Latin American societies through art, culture, and politics, through my analysis of the baroque in the region. Furthermore, as a Mexican artist and scholar, living and working in the traditional unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, known as Vancouver, in Canada since 2011, I aim to bring unique perspectives to discourses on art, theory, and philosophy. In my art practices and teaching, I bring this experience and background to share and connect with societies in order to seek new expressions and possibilities to think, produce, and activate our roles and better understand our socio-political implications across the Sem Ānáhuac (so called the Americas), and on a global scale.

 

*Canada Gazette. (2021). The Distribution of Temporary Foreign Workers Across Industries in Canada. Part I, 155 (28), 3850-3914. https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2019/2019-07-13/pdf/g1-15328.pdf

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Programming:

Opening Reception

June 21, 7-9pm

Artist Talk + Guacamole Party

June 22, 1-2pm

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Carlos Colín (Mexico, 1980), currently lives and works between Mexico City and Vancouver, Canada. Carlos is a visual artist and pedagogue, his artistic and theoretical research topic explores and connects the core cultural, socio-political, and artistic manifestations through baroque’s rhetorical and narrative systems as a colonial legacy in contemporary socio-political events in Latin America and its migration. He studied his undergraduate program in Visual Communication and Design, and a MFA at the National School of Fine Art UNAM, in Mexico City. He has a second MFA and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia. Recently, his work has been exhibited in BIENALSUR 2023, Argentina; The New Gallery in Calgary; Contemporary Art Space in Montevideo, Uruguay, and at the Workers Art & Heritage Centre, in Hamilton. Colin was awarded the 2016 Emerging Artist, and the 2017 Artist Studio Award Program granted for the City of Vancouver.