Belonging(s) in Movement

Curator: Belonging(s) in Movement (2019)

Void was invited by Princeton University (New Jersey, USA) to participate in Belonging(s) in Movement, an exchange of stories between newcomers in Saskatoon and Latin American immigrants in the New York/New Jersey area. The event was led by myself and three fellow Saskatoon artists – Manuela Valle-Castro, Chris Morin, and Monique Blom – along with Nicole Legnani, Assistant Professor of Colonial Latin American Studies at Princeton, and graduate student Vero Carchedi. We held a reading from zines developed by newcomers to Saskatoon through previous Void workshops, Monique and Mexican artist Arantxa Araujo led a performance (pictured above) in the courtyard of East Pyne Hall, the building that houses Princeton’s Department of Spanish & Portugese – who hosted Belonging(s) in Movement – and then held a full-day workshop where participants each developed their own zine. These zines were brought back to Saskatoon, risograph printed in an edition of 100, and sent back to Princeton as a demonstration of how too often nowadays products and ideas can cross borders but people cannot. All zines developed by newcomers through Void are now collected and archived by Princeton Library.

Belonging(s) in Movement emphasized the stories of Latin American immigrants in the Princeton area to forefront issues relating to the U.S.–Mexico border, which were particularly pressing as a result of U.S. federal foreign policy at that time. In the words of our Princeton collaborators, the event “place[d] indigenous and newcomer/immigrant stories from the Americas in conversation with one another. We situate[d] this encounter on the day recognized as the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the Caribbean as an active reckoning with this history and its legacies through art, storytelling and praxis.”

Canada Council for the Arts and SK Arts provided funding for Void’s zine projects with Global Gathering Place and Saskatoon Open Door Society that paved the pathway to this exchange.