"Canada needs to select immigrants who are ready, willing and able to fully integrate into Canada’s labour market and fill gaps in our economy, particularly where we have existing skill shortages. Applicants … are assessed on factors such as their education, their work experience, age, and language abilities[1]”. These language abilities are at the heart of Bambitchell’s Silent Citizen, which reflects on the use of language to deter access to immigration while silence, in juxtaposition to the spoken word, is materialized in the ‘obedient’ proper citizen and mobilized to ensure an ordered society.

Bambitchell’s work tackles issues such as citizenship, border politics, mobility justice and processes of colonization. In this exhibition, the viewer is encouraged to participate in French and English tests which appear on a screen similar to that of a karaoke video. The work provokes questions around the absurdity and banality of both the system of testing and the content involved in immigration procedures.

Bambitchell is the artistic collaboration between Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Mitchell. They have produced mixed media installations since 2008. Their practice uses queer and feminist frameworks in order to reimagine borders, historical patterns of movement and mobility, labour, migration and memory. These frameworks, often showcased through irony and a camp aesthetic, invite nuanced and complicated re-workings of images, architectures, language, sound and bodies. Both Bamboat and Mitchell have independent art practices and are members of the Pleasure Dome Experimental Film & Video Programming Collective.

[1] The Government of Canada, “A Fast and Flexible Economic Immigration System”. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/pub/eco-action-plan-eng.pdf

Exhibitions  

Participating Artists: Bambitchell (Toronto)
Curator(s):
Credits: Bambitchell, 2015.