Myung-Sun Kim’s ongoing project, ‘Rituals for Belonging’ invites artists of various disciplines to share objects associated with rituals that may recall joy, desire, and belonging. These rituals (such as recipes, meditations, or call to actions that offer the possibility of personal transformation and collective liberation) are encompassed in the series of objects on exhibition.
For the Ontario Culture Days Festival, nine contributing artists offer rituals to put forward to the future. ‘Rituals for Belonging’ imagines horizontal lineages of kinship and community, built over time through past iterations of the project. Past contributors include Althea Balmes, Clare Butcher, Jody Chan, Sebastian De Line, Ayumi Goto, Vanessa Kwan, Pamila Matharu, Peter Morin, John Murchie, Lisa Myers, Una Lee, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Haruko Okano, Amy Siegel, Tatas Collective, Camille Turner, and Tania Willard.
The exhibition runs for the duration of the festival at the Toronto Public Library – Lilliane H. Smith Branch. On October 7th, join Myung-Sun in-person at the library for an exhibition walk-through and ritual sharing.
Myung-Sun Kim is an artist, and a curator. Her work explores questions of belonging, inheritance, silenced histories, foodways, kinship, queerness, rituals and lineage. She has presented her work across North America and in Finland, including Art Gallery of Ontario, MOCA Toronto, FADO Performance Art Centre, and Plug In ICA. As a curator, she has led curatorial programming at galleries and festivals including Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Inside Out Film Festival, The Theatre Centre, the Toronto Biennial of Art as the Co-Curator of Public Programming & Learning, and at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (2022) as a guest curator.
Rituals for Belonging’ is an ongoing socially-engaged work where Myung-Sun Kim and invited artists within her community exchange an art object with rituals to accompany the objects. These rituals offer possible cultural inheritances to put forward into the future, carrying our ways of expressing and embodying compassion for one another. The rituals include a meditation, a recipe, affirmations, a call to action, and other forms of instructions to elicit the act of belonging or the possibility of remediation of the body, the mind, and the healing of our connective relations. These rituals are offered to visitors where they can reinterpret and respond to the rituals’ call for belonging and care. The vessels function similar to an heirloom of kinship and as a container for time and space to hold conversations and human connections towards belonging. The intention is to build a large library of rituals that is open-sourced online and to be activated in the future through programming.
Lillian Allen, Artist Contributor
Justine Chambers, Artist Contributor
Jody Chan, Artist Contributor
Snack Witch Joni Cheung, Artist Contributor
Erika DeFreitas, Artist Contributor
Sameer Farooq, Artist Contributor
Ness Lee, Artist Contributor
Simone Schmidt, Artist Contributor
Jill Thorp-Shepherd, Artist Contributor
Learn more about the contributors here!
Toronto Public Library is the busiest urban public library system in the world. Every year, they have millions of users visiting our branches and taking advantage of our online services. They empower Torontonians to thrive in the digital age and global knowledge economy. With expanded access to technology, lifelong learning and diverse cultural and leisure experiences, Torontonians have increased opportunities for growth and success, as well as stronger connections to each other and their communities.
Toronto Public Library- Lilian H. Smith Branch
Wheelchair Accessible
Gender-neutral washrooms Masks recommended
Paid street parking along Huron Street,
More parking at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on north side of College. See here for accessibility information for this venue.
Rituals for Belonging
Exhibition: September 22nd – October 15th, 2023 Library Hours Toronto Public Library – Lillian H. Smith Branch
239 College St, Toronto, ON M5T 1R5
Exhibition Walk-Through & Ritual Sharing: October 7th, 2023
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Lillian H. Smith Park
180 Huron Street,
Toronto, ON
The Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund is a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation.