Sanctuary Inter/rupted cassette art by Hamda Warsame
Sanctuary Inter/rupted: borders, illegalization, and unbelonging
with Jessica Kirk and Emily Gilbert
We engage with the multidisciplinary art of Sanctuary Inter/rupted, a group exhibit that explored internal borders, illegalization, and unbelonging in Toronto. Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists complicated Toronto's sanctuary legislation, extending conversations on everyday deportability and illegalization as mapped on the body, regardless of status. We begin by tracing a burgeoning critical literature on sanctuary movements in North America and the dangerous collusions between local police and national border enforcement. We then focus on how artists unsettled whitewashed theories of belonging and contested the limits of liberal sanctuary movements. In accounting for internal and intimate bordering of the city and the limits of claims for belonging in white settler society, we expand on understandings of illegalization in Canada and racial justice as practiced in sanctuary movement organizing.
Essay available via The Canadian Geographer