Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Christie Carriere

Medicine Shop - Chinatown Mall Project

Medicine Shop1 of 3 panels on sewn, un-stretched, hanging canvas scroll featuring the owner and her shop in the Chinatown Centre mall, 222 Spadina Ave.

“... It remains that the presence of new arts communities cropping up in underserved and predominantly racialized neighborhoods is often one of the first signs of encroaching gentrification. Usually, this is born out of economic need, artists require affordable rentals for their studios, art shows/events, as well as their own homes. Soon, developers use the presence of an arts community to sell the area as a trendy up-and-coming neighborhood, making the artists, intentionally or not, complicit in the act of art-washing. As their ideal market of may be wary of living in neighbourhoods which have been criminalized in the media and which are neglected by the city, developers and city officials begin the extermination-like practice of “cleaning up the neighbourhood.” This involves the intentional erasure of affordable space and food security. As rent increases, local residents and business owners can no longer afford to live or provide affordable and culturally competent food/goods/services in the neighbourhood. The community faces mass evictions with little to no notice, the bulldozing of deeply needed spaces, and the elimination of any visual indicators of the people who built this neighbourhood. Gentrification works much in the same way as the formula for scalability*, through isolation and interchangeability, developers can transform our city into a project of smooth economic growth and exponential expansion – our communities undermine that.*Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2015).”