Virtual Tour
February 26, 7PM
Online on Zoom
Join Richard Ibghy, Marilou Lemmens and Programming and Exhibition Specialist Sonali Menezes for a virtual tour and discussion of the exhibition Theatre from the Jungle.
Register in advance of this event by clicking HERE.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event.
Theatre From the Jungle presents the collaborative video work of artists Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens. The artists spent two months working with 12 participants who are immigrants and current or former employees of Maple Leaf Foods meatpacking plant in Brandon, Manitoba. Using selected passages from Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle as a script, the participants engaged in a series of experimental theatre workshops that were filmed. The Jungle is a story that documents the struggles of immigrant labour in the Chicago meat packing industry in the early 1900’s. While working conditions have improved since then, the novel is still very relevant today and can be used to interrogate modern labour practices. The resulting video installation, paired with a series of unedited interviews with the participants, highlights the realities of migrant labour and the lived experiences of an immigrant based workforce in Canada’s largest meatpacking plant.
Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens live and work in Durham-Sud, Quebec, Canada. Together, they have developed a collaborative artistic practice that spans across multiple media, including video, performance and installation. Working both sculpturally and with the body, their practice engages the possibility of escaping the productivist logic of modernism and its incarnations in areas of labour, economics, management, psychology, biology, and ethology. Their projects challenge the concept of objectivity and the scientific obsession with measurement by opting for idiosyncratic methodologies in practical experiments, processes of translation, and craft-based data visualisation techniques. These processes allow for contingency, association, and playfulness while also enabling the duo to collaborate with performers, activists, anthropologists, scientists, and communities. They have exhibited widely across Canada and internationally.
WAHC wishes to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton, the Province of Ontario, CUPE, the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of our exhibitions and ancillary programs. This exhibition is presented with equipment assistance provided by Factory Media Centre.
For more information, please contact Sonali Menezes, Programming and Exhibitions Specialist, at (905) 522-3003 ex. 29 or sonali@wahc-museum.ca
