A virtual program with Jonny Sopotiuk
In this virtual program, union activist and VALU CO-OP member Jonny Sopotiuk and community members discuss the Asiatic Exclusion League and role of white-dominated unions in racial exclusions (on both the shop floor and in government legislation) both historically and today with a focus on the work the Union Cooperative Initiative has been doing within the community in Vancouver’s Chinatown to repair relationships and trust.
Jonny Sopotiuk is a visual artist, community, and labour union organizer from Burnaby BC. Jonny has been organizing in the student and labour movements for over two decades and is a founding charter member of the Arts and Cultural Workers Union and a founding member of a number of union-worker cooperative projects. His studio-based visual arts practice explores labour, compulsion, and control through drawing and sculpture. He has exhibited across Canada and the United States and in 2020, curated the Wicked Visual Arts exhibition with the Queer Arts Festival featuring artists exploring the body, community, and architecture of homonormativity. A skilled facilitator and presenter, Jonny regularly speaks about his socially engaged arts and worker organizing practices
through workshops and lectures across North America.
WAHC wishes to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton, the Province of Ontario, CUPE National, the Canada Council for the Arts, Canada’s Building Trades Unions, OPSEU/SEFPO and Teamsters Local Union 879 for their support of our exhibitions and ancillary programs.
For more information, please contact Sylvia Nickerson, Programming and Exhibitions Specialist, at (905) 522-3003 ex. 29 or sylvia@wahc-museum.ca.
