March 1-30, 2019

Opening Reception: Friday, March 1,
7-10 pm

Productive Discomfort is a project and group exhibition encompassing seven hooked rugs, each conceptually designed and produced around the theme of ‘unwelcome mats’. Contributing artists, who predominantly work in non-rug hooking mediums, learned the technique through a series of collaborative workshop led by Toronto-based artist and facilitator Lauren Cullen.

Canadian hooked mats are often exhibited as domestic objects greeting guests with good cheer. Anti-racist, anti-colonial and feminist queer crip perspectives remind us however that objects and spaces are never truly welcoming to all. While a hooked rug marks a threshold and communicates an expectation of serving, Productive Discomfort rubs up against this promise and explores what can happen when we draw attention to that which is unwelcome. Thus this exhibition invites the audience to consider the following question; how can unwelcome rugs and social aspects of rug hooking serve as a disruptive force?

Productive Discomfort is part of Myseum Intersections: Revisionist Toronto.

What are the lost or hidden stories that have been paved over and forgotten? How do we reclaim those histories? Revisionist Toronto revisits and re-imagines the dominant narratives that shape our understanding of the city through a festival collaborative exhibits and events.

Documentation by Polina Teif