After completing Canada’s transcontinental railway in 1885, the government sought to expel the Chinese workers who’d made it possible, by enacting 100 anti-Chinese policies, laws and Head Taxes, culminating with the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, a complete ban on Chinese immigration.

A research project and interactive exhibition investigating the intersections and ongoing relationships between labour rights in the Caribbean and its diaspora, the enduring impacts of colonization, and the current labour landscape for people of Caribbean descent.

Powerful installation: “We Deserve Life: Honoring Our Martyrs” showcases in Toronto this week to memorialize over 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israel

What does caregiving look like?

From hospital stays to home life, intergenerational connections to PSW work, six one-minute videos reflect on the lived experiences of artists who care and the loved ones they look after. Running continuously on loop, these silent shorts will be on view 24/7. Passersby are encouraged to share their own personal reflections on cards installed by the gallery window.

Showcasing the work of Cohort II of LaunchPAD VIBE Arts’ Transitional Artist Mentorship Program.

The Professor’s Desk pairs documents from the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance’s (ACLA) archives within the frame of a professor's office. This project looks particularly at four cases of discrimination on or relating to Canadian universities; the W5 Campus Giveaway TV Special from 1979, Professor Kin-Yip Chun's case of racial discrimination against the University of Toronto, MacLean Magazine's "Too Asian" article from 2010, and current barriers facing international students across the country.

After the Cataclysm, Before the Storm is an intimate reflection on losing place and becoming placeless. The efforts of this inquiry are focused on Vietnam where history moves at a rapid cadence. Within the period of one lifetime the country has convulsed from divisive wars for liberation from French to American occupations, communist reunification and a transition to a capitalist market economy.

Guided by the sensorial nature of clay-making, Within and Without, is a meditation on the genealogy of sustenance, dream worlds and the rituals that hold us. Related to the intimacy of touch, Within and Without, brings together artists and makers to mould objects, motifs and shapes that trace geographic, spiritual and creative belonging/unbeloning.

A little food is a feast (2022) is a collection of stories - of love, grief, tenderness and vulnerability. They’re stories that are meant to be shared with you, but the details are mine to keep.

As a site of physical and metaphorical fermentation, wet like an open vowel sound is a project on the materiality of culture. In its microbiological sense, bacterial culture is what allows fermented foods to flourish, creating a lineage of symbiosis and care.

LaunchPAD is VIBE Arts’ Transitional Artist Mentorship Program. The program was built to support our transitional emerging artists in their journey to becoming established arts educators with VIBE Arts.

Maneesa Veeravel, Sylvie the Artist, Talie Shalmon, Nicholas Ridiculous and Jason Julien began their journey with VIBE Arts' LaunchPAD program in 2021. As the program wraps up, these 5 artists will take over Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto for 5 days each throughout September! The pieces exhibited are a result of the artist's time in the LaunchPAD program.

Exploring topics of extinction and the commodification of nature, Last Species On Earth is a multi-channel video installation which weaves together a speculative reality where the last surviving specimens of plant and animal origin are kept in incubation chambers, situating viewers as zoo attendees. Last Species On Earth fragments the evolution of plants and animals as we know them today, following what natural selection would look like if nature were to adapt in total agreement with humanity's desire to domesticate it.

Is there a point where you can feel like you’ve done your due diligence to learn everything about your heritage? How do you reconnect with your culture and identity in moments when you feel too Canadian? Where do you consider home?

here-there listening room is a space that invites members of the Asian Canadian diaspora to contemplate these nuanced questions together. A community-driven exhibition, the listening room is centered around nineteen unguided audio stories shared by Asian Canadians across Canada. Each story is inextricably linked to the next, weaving a rich anthology of lived histories and experiences.

Tracing the “crevice between hope and despair”, a space that Palestinians know all too well, Revolution Must Mean Life presents a glimpse into the intersections of the labour movement and the Palestinian liberation movement. With poetry at its core, the project amplifies a collective call to action from Labour For Palestine that transcends BDS resolutions and highlights the central role of workers’ struggles in the resistance against the Zionist regime.

Not all cleaning is false is a solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Alessandra Pozzuoli, featuring work made in response to her experiences mourning her maternal grandmother.

For the project, “Chinatown, the best!”, we ask seniors in the Chinatown area to envision what would make Chinatown a great place to live, a place of communion. What kind of amenities, services, cultural events would they like to see? Spending time with seniors at community centres in weekly gatherings, we will learn more of who they are, what they need/desire, what they would like to share of their skills and experiences.

‍

对于 “唐人街，最好的” 这个项目，我们邀请唐人街地区的老年人设想什么会使唐人街成为一个宜居的地方，一个交流的地方。他们希望看到什么样的设施、服务、文化活动？在每周与社区中心的老年人共度时光的聚会中，我们将更多地了解他们是谁，他们需要/渴望什么，他们所希望分享的技能和经验是什么。

‍

Remote Possibility presents the work of Roundtable’s 2020 and 2021 cohorts, viewable in person for the very first time.

The Chinatown Biennial has been exhibiting on sidewalks, benches, lampposts, storefronts, and now at Whippersnapper. We bring together two artists, Anne Chen and Annie TZ Lafrance, who are invested in the realness of forgeries.

Chinatown is again facing a period of change and uncertainty with businesses battered by COVID lockdowns, with Anti-Asian Racism and with development pressures in Toronto’s over-heated property market. Some of us got together hoping to put a face to our community to show what and where in Chinatown we work, shop, eat and love.

Sensing, Feeling, Being is an exhibition that features multi-media and installation works by Jessica Karuhanga, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, and Yara El Safi. Each artist employs various sensorial strategies through the use of food, song, video, and sound to demand the attention of the viewer and detail experiences of neurodiversity, nostalgia, joy, demands of labor, and language reclamation of women, femme, gender non-conforming, and queer people.

Peep/Show is a solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Brittney Appleby, who is based on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver, BC. Peep/Show exhibition features the short film “Paris Model,” with additional stills from the film available for viewing in person at Whippersnapper Gallery. Peep/Show will be available for viewing from Monday, January 11th 2021-February 11th 2021.

Project Acorn Bread is a community arts initiative with a singular purpose of making wild acorn bread during the autumn season as a means to deepen solidarity between Black, Afro-Indigenous and Indigenous communities in Toronto. Led by writers Whitney French and Lue Boileau, this project is spiritually guided by the masterful writing of Octavia E. Butler — namely her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower. People from all ages will be invited to forage, store, mill flour to make acorn bread, a favourite meal by the novel’s protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina.

With our deepest sympathies, Whippersnapper Gallery and PUFF Paddy would like to present you a gentle reminder to “take care” because we’re in this together and as we’re adjusting to the new reality, we all need to find creative solutions to support each other.

We will be working with the Black Artist Union (BAU)- a collective of 10 Toronto based emerging black artists who have been making headway in the local art community.  Formed in 2016 to assist in the exhibition of artists and creators of the African Diaspora, the BAU collective consists of artists: Philip Saunders, Oreka James, Tim Yanick Hunter, Curtia Wright,  Aaron Jones, Flimon Yohannes, Nathan Olokun, Ekow Stone, Sylvia Limbana, and Destiny Grimm.

Exhibit viewable from sidewalk after sundown.

Will You Listen?: Latinx Voices in Tkaronto is a collection of stories which explore how people of colour experience public spaces.

Living Legacies: Two-Spirit Stories, seasons one and two, are Arts workshops centering the stories of Two-Spirit communities in Tkaronto.

Combining a history of product marketing alongside archival materials from the Toronto Star, Accent chronicles MSG from its early embracement within Canada and the Western world to its present day antagonization. Accent is a case study of the nuanced and racialized undertones within the everyday.

Biding My Time / Biting My Tongue is an exploration in repression, memory, and desire of mental health and illness in South Asian communities.

Hiba Ali’s exhibition probes Western ideology embedded in digital media by analyzing technologies’ role in place-making and imaging the world around us.