watching territory
Alejandro Arauz, Taylor Jolin, STÉFY, Khalil Talhaoui, Jay White & Genevieve Robertson
20 January - 25 April 2025
curated by Kayleigh Lewis and Stéfy McKnight
opening reception
Monday, January 20th
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Dunton Tower room 1105
Taylor Jolin. Remote Viewing. Digital Print. 16x20". 2018.
“Traditional Territory means we have an obligation to the land and the water. It means we have an obligation to the people who reside upon the land and the water… So we are not interested…in saying we have jurisdiction over this”
- Stacey Laforme, Gimaa of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Talking Treaties, 2022: 164).
As we gather here, on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin First Nations, we ask ourselves, what is territory? Or, perhaps, we ask, how is territory created – monitored – nurtured – controlled?
Often, stories of territory are told from the perspective of the colonizer and reflect colonial ideations and tropes of terra nullius, discovery, expansion, and frontierism. Very rarely, if ever, are the territories and land referenced in land acknowledgements given back to the Indigenous communities named in the acknowledgement. Rather, as settlers, we impose boundaries, walls and gated properties on traditional territories and Indigenous land. While doing so displacing Indigenous communities, violently damaging ecosystems, and extracting resources for capital gain. Settler and colonial imposed territories are monitored, enforced, and controlled using methods of surveillance and policing.
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This exhibition brings forward a global perspective of territory, and invites artistic discussions that critically reflect on the conditions of territory, its history internationally, and its tumultuous relationship with colonialism and surveillance. The diversity of artworks in this exhibition highlight the complicated and political ways that territory exists in spaces of conflict and coloniality.
Drawing on Susan Cahill’s concept of surveillance frontierism, and surveillance as “settler-colonial viewing” (2023), this exhibition centres surveillance as both a condition and aggravation of space, while also being a colonial practice itself. Examples of this, highlighted by the contributing artists include border control, CCTV cameras in “private” and public spaces, digital assemblages, and land policies. The artists highlight the complexities of surveillance practices and systems as not only technological, but that operate in invisible ways through policies and forced displacement.
watching territory is funded by the Carleton University Research Achievement Award.