Public Infrastructure
By: Tamara Jones
April 4-27, 2025
Storefront exhibition viewable 24/7
Gallery hours: Fridays and Saturdays 3-7pm
Public Infrastructure is an interactive installation featuring video art and textile sculptures, transforming a hostile landscape into a dreamlike site of play.
In Tamara’s 2023 video artwork This is a crisis, an anonymous bureaucrat traipses around the City of Toronto, repurposing hostile architecture as their personal playground. Featuring spliced audio of former mayor John Tory’s victory speeches from 2014, 2018, and 2022 municipal election nights, bleak scenes are juxtaposed with a heavy-handed narrative of progress and inclusion. This work offers a critical commentary on navigating procedural obstacles, surveillance and criminalization of poverty, and what cities lose when they leave the most marginalized behind.
Tamara Jones is an arts worker based in Tkaronto (Toronto) and Yelamu (San Francisco) whose practice uses experimental video, site-specific performance, and sculpture to explore bureaucratic architecture and the politics of public space. Their work has been programmed by the Black Experimental Film Festival, Artspace Gallery, Pleasure Dome, Dancemakers, and Images Festival. Their writing—documenting social movements and the cultural sector—has been published by The Local, Spring Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Ex-Puritan, and a handful of independent zines.
Accompanying programming
Opening reception: April 4, 6-8pm
Workshop: Patterns for Living is a contact improv and performance art workshop for queer and trans artists of colour. Tamara will lead an exploration of work by marginalized performance and video artists and invite participants to create communal performance artwork. No performance experience is necessary. Space is limited.
April 14, 11am-2:30pm
April 19, 11am-2:30pm
Accessibility: Unfortunately, Whippersnapper Gallery is not wheelchair accessible. The washroom is down one flight of stairs. Masks will be available on-site. Please reach out to programming@whippersnapper.ca with any accessibility needs, and we will do our best to accommodate.
*N95 masks will be provided.
*We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which has funded this project through the Concept to Realization composite stream.