September 21 – December 1, 2019
The New Red Order (NRO) is a mutable collective that collaborates with self-described “informants” to create video and performance works that question the desire for indigeneity in dominant culture. Never Settle is an ambitious, multi-part project that includes a public recruitment campaign and a participatory installation that invites prospective recruits to undergo an initiation. Playing with the notion of headhunting, NRO seeks to enlist candidates in their public secret society, thereby investigating shame and the desire for indigeneity.
Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and presented in partnership with Gallery TPW. Made possible with the generous support of Autodesk.
Bio
New Red Order (NRO) is a public secret society whose members, Adam Khalil (Ojibway, born in 1988, Nyack, USA; lives in New York, USA), Zack Khalil (Ojibway, born in 1991, Newton, USA; lives in New York, USA) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit, born in 1976, Ketchikan, USA; lives in New York City, USA), collaborate with self-described informants to create videos and performances that function as a radical “calling out [and] calling in.” Recent presentations include Feel at Home Here at Artists Space, New York, in 2021.
Exhibition Site
259 Lake Shore Blvd East
The life of this nondescript building reveals the area’s economic history. Its first tenant in 1945, the Standard Chemical Company, produced methanol, formaldehyde, and charcoal. A railway line to the south tethered the site to the movement of goods. By 1954, the building was divided into a warehouse and a showroom, a configuration that remained intact over the course of various leaseholders, including oil and electrical supply companies and a series of car dealerships. (The advertising of its most recent tenant, Volvo, is still visible on the façade.) This building’s fate is indeterminate, as real estate development is increasingly filling the voids left by industrial decline.
259 Lake Shore Blvd East
Toronto ON
M5A 3T7