Carrie Allison

we tend to care is a touring exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Carrie Allison presented in partnership with Urban Shaman Contemporary Art. The installation unfolds across both venues with a show at Urban Shaman and an intervention at WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection galleries.

At WAG-Qaumajuq, we tend to care is displayed in the exhibition Collection on View: European and North American Art, 1500-1900. Positioned centrally within the space, Allison’s beaded artwork deliberately disrupts the linear, chronological narrative of canonical art history. This exhibition-within-an-exhibition functions as a site of engagement with the historical collection, articulating a critique of the colonial ideologies that have shaped dominant understandings of grass, land, and cultivated green spaces.

Allison’s artwork ranges from intimate engagements with Allison’s family and territory, replacing extractive botanical sketches with portraits of kin, to speculative, and even nihilistic, digital interpretations of what may emerge if colonial logics persist. Through the labour- and time-intensive act of beading, Allison draws a parallel to the effort required to maintain lawns, gardens, and yards. In doing so, she critiques the colonial logics of subjugation and control imposed upon the land.