ReHoming Closing Reception

This exhibition introduces Helen Kong’s interconnected practice; between object making, self awareness and close observations, Helen interweaves a wide range of concepts and materials into her artistic practice. 

ReHoming emerges from a careful consideration towards objects and their meanings, blurring the differences between personal archives and historical objects is at the core of this exhibition. In ReHoming, we experience a full cycle of making the personal public and the public personal, while manifesting acts of care, togetherness and continuity. 

This live exhibition aims at capturing Helen’s deep and tangled connections with personal objects, yet, it opens up endless possibilities to how and where objects can be taken care of. 

While untangling such connections, Helen takes us through a close observation to the process of letting go and claiming, both objects and feelings. 

This two-part installation will be a live exhibition where the artist will update the contents weekly during the exhibition period.

Part One: Rehoming Objects of Significance – These objects will be catalogued with their stories and dreams of future homes. They are available for people to bring home and revive them again.

Part Two: Rehoming Journal – A visual arts journal where Helen will create small entries to process the emotions throughout this journey (from small paintings/drawings, to weaving samples, to vessels) to rehome and process their overwhelming feelings, as they go through this necessary process of letting go and finding homes for objects that are sentimental, yet currently lifeless.

All the items will be documented in an Instagram account where people can read and listen to stories, details, and/or the history of each piece. DM on the account for inquiries and to request adopting items.

Helen Kong is a tea practitioner, ceramic artist specializing in making tea wares for Japanese and Chinese tea, and the owner and facilitator of Secret Teatime; a clay space hidden in Scarborough where people sip tea and play with clay. Aside from making, she is also a ceramics teacher and a facilitator/organizer of multi-sensory events focused on tea and food where she shares her knowledge about the Way of Tea, its philosophies and how it relates to her daily life. After more than a decade of being a primary caregiver and working as an entrepreneur artist, her studies in ritualized tea have been a source of grounding and coping. Especially in times of life and creative burnout, depression, anxiety, and her own chronic illness. Her studies in tea is also a connection with her East Asian animist roots that allows her to maintain a deep relationship to the materials, tools, and objects she collaborates with in her practice and daily life. Helen is slowly moving from the rollercoaster mindset between over-consumption and scarcity -which manifests in hoarding tendencies- to having true connective appreciation with the objects that she chooses to have in her life. This is a continuous work in progress. 

Some of her recent projects include the “Ichigo-Ichie Tea Project” during Nuit Blanche Toronto 2022 which was documented in the C Magazine (Issue 156) article by Jasmine Gui “Different Things in Different Scenes: Encountering Ichi-go Ichi-e in Tea”, “Meeting for Teas” visual arts residency at the Banff Centre (2023), “The Looms We Resemble” group exhibition with Workman Arts (2024), and “In One Chawan: Seasonal Food Labs” co-facilitated with Anson Ng.

The Artist in Residence program is part of Workman Arts’ Rendezvous with Madness Festival and is in collaboration with Tangled Art + Disability. By providing time and resources, we believe this can support the development of a body of work to become exhibition ready for a solo show at the Tangled Art + Disability gallery vitrine space. We offer this opportunity to a Workman Arts member who has not or has minimally exhibited their artwork, and would benefit from a solo exhibition. 

Helen Kong is our Artist in Residence for the 2024/25 year. 

Shane Belcourt is a four-time CSA-nominated Director, with award-winning narrative and documentary works in both film and TV.  He has directed three narrative feature films, TKARONTO (which was showcased in both the TIFF Indigenous Cinema Retrospective and the UCLA Film & Television Archive traveling exhibition, “Through Indian Eyes: Native American Cinema”); RED ROVER (premiered at the Whistler Film Festival and can be found on Amazon Prime  Currently, Shane is directing the feature documentary NADAAMAAIS which received Telefilm funding and set for release in 2025; and is a co-creator and co-showrunner (with Tasha Hubbard) of a premium narrative mini-series in development with CBC titled, STONECHILD.

Featuring Director Kurtis Watson, Producer Rob Viscardis, family members as well as mental health advocate Valéry Brosseau and moderated by filmmaker and film programmer Mariam Zaidi.

Mariam Zaidi is a filmmaker, film programmer, and arts manager based in Toronto. She has worked on programming teams at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival since 2016 and the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival since 2020, respectively. Previously, Zaidi was the Executive Director of the Breakthroughs Film Festival. Aside from festival programming, Zaidi has also made short films that have been supported by the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the CBC. Most recently she worked on the distribution and impact campaigns for the Canadian films, Academy-Award Nominated, To Kill a Tiger (TIFF, 2023) and An Unfinished Journey (Hot Docs, 2024).