“Traditional Territory means we have an obligation to the land and the water. It means we have an obligation to the people who reside upon the land and the water… So we are not interested…in saying we have jurisdiction over this”
- Stacey Laforme, Gimaa of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Talking Treaties, 2022: 164).
As we gather here, on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin First Nations, we ask ourselves, what is territory? Or, perhaps, we ask, how is territory created – monitored – nurtured – controlled?
Often, stories of territory are told from the perspective of the colonizer and reflect colonial ideations and tropes of terra nullius, discovery, expansion, and frontierism. Very rarely, if ever, are the territories and land referenced in land acknowledgements given back to the Indigenous communities named in the acknowledgement. Rather, as settlers, we impose boundaries, walls and gated properties on traditional territories and Indigenous land. While doing so displacing Indigenous communities, violently damaging ecosystems, and extracting resources for capital gain. Settler and colonial imposed territories are monitored, enforced, and controlled using methods of surveillance and policing.
This exhibition brings forward a global perspective of territory, and invites artistic discussions that critically reflect on the conditions of territory, its history internationally, and its tumultuous relationship with colonialism and surveillance. The diversity of artworks in this exhibition highlight the complicated and political ways that territory exists in spaces of conflict and coloniality.
Drawing on Susan Cahill’s concept of surveillance frontierism, and surveillance as “settler-colonial viewing” (2023), this exhibition centres surveillance as both a condition and aggravation of space, while also being a colonial practice itself. Examples of this, highlighted by the contributing artists include border control, CCTV cameras in “private” and public spaces, digital assemblages, and land policies. The artists highlight the complexities of surveillance practices and systems as not only technological, but that operate in invisible ways through policies and forced displacement.
Virtual walk-through of watching territory
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Alejandro Arauz is a Nicaraguan-Canadian artist and Assistant Professor at Queen's University in the visual art program. His research-based studio practice critically examines traditional and interdisciplinary methodologies to explore themes of identity, adaptation, and surveillance, primarily within the context of the Latin American Diaspora. Through a nuanced engagement with migration and print-based processes, Arauz investigates questions of inclusivity, sentimentality, and heterogeneity in an increasingly mediated world. Arauz’s innovative approaches, such as "mediated methods" and "print performance," merge process and content to evoke the complexities of diasporic experiences. By thinking through print with a poetic lens, he integrates migratory terminology with studio lexicon—exploring terms like impact, layers, registration, transfer, substrates, and lineage—creating works that reflect on shared and lived experiences. His recent collaborative project, Tracing Kingston's Solidarities, was nominated for two Galleries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG) Awards. In 2025, Arauz will present solo exhibitions in Italy and Canada, continuing his interdisciplinary exploration of cultural practices and personal transformation.
El Rio Grande and the Grand River is a video performance that juxtaposes two rivers—the Rio Grande and the Grand River—each representing contrasting yet interconnected narratives of migration, identity, and geography. In the artwork, Alejandro Arauz crosses El Rio Grande at night and the Grand River at dawn, evoking a duality between survival and recreation. The Rio Grande, a symbol of struggle and resilience, draws from the artist’s memories of church testimonials recounting perilous crossings into the United States. In contrast, the Grand River recalls Arauz’s childhood in Canada, where the river was a site of swimming and fishing, but also a near-drowning experience. The project reflects Arauz's deeply rooted commitment to socially engaged narratives. It was inspired by the BlueServo website, launched in 2008, which enabled public surveillance of U.S.-Mexico border crossings via live web streams. This sparked Arauz's critical response, prompting a need to transplant himself into geographical sites along the U.S.-Mexico border for immersive research, performative resistance, and studio production. While living and teaching in the United States, Arauz conducted interviews with individuals navigating the complex realities of border life. These experiences informed his work, bridging firsthand testimonies and his own lived experiences of migration. By using plastic bags as flotation devices, Arauz symbolizes both the resourcefulness and vulnerability of migrants, weaving together themes of surveillance, resistance, and resilience. Through contrasting geographies and actions, the piece invites viewers to critically reflect on cultural transformations, shared experiences, and the cyclical nature of migration.
Jay White is an interdisciplinary artist, animator, activist and storyteller living on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island) as an uninvited guest on unceded Skwxwúmesh territory. Jay’s work prioritizes respectful and ethical collaborations between humans and other beings. Jay’s installations have exhibited internationally and his animated short films have won awards internationally. His animations have won Best Animated Short at the Worldwide Animation Festival, and a long list entry for Academy Award nomination. Jay's most important, challenging and radical ongoing project is unschooling his ten-year old son: personally unlearning the harmful practices of colonial and institutional education systems, while raising his son in a life where he is free to learn under his own terms—playfully and joyfully.
Genevieve Robertson is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of contemporary art and environmental studies. Her practice is grounded in drawing/painting, and extends to video, installation, and various forms of collective work and collaboration. Her practice explores the origins of primordial matter across geologic time, industrial and settler-colonial impacts on more-than-human beings, and the intelligence and interconnection of the life systems of which we are part. Robertson holds a BFA from NSCAD University, an MFA from Emily Carr University, and has been supported through grants, exhibitions, conferences, and residencies internationally. She is of mixed European settler ancestry and currently lives and works on the unceded territory of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx Sinixt Confederacy Arrow Lakes and Yaqan Nukiy Lower Kootenay Band peoples.
A series of six-week exposure pinhole camera photographs taken along a portion of the proposed Kinder Morgan Pipeline route during Walk the Line, a participatory walk along the proposed Kinder Morgan Pipeline Route through Coquitlam and Burnaby, B.C.. Participants mounted pinhole cameras along the route, which traverses salmon-bearing streams, public greenways, commercial and private property, and is a site of ongoing contestation. Local authorities have arrested citizens for taking photographs near the terminus route, at the Trans Mountain Tank Farm on Burnaby Mountain. The pinhole camera photographs are a response to industry-government collusion on the restriction of citizens agency and are a gesture towards resistance, counter-surveillance, and seeing through extended temporal perspectives.
Taylor Jolin is an Ojibwe multidisciplinary artist from Sault Ste. Marie, ON. Her work engages with themes of land and place, non-verbal communication, and surveillance. She has exhibited extensively locally and across Ontario. Jolin’s graphic design and photography practice involves collaboration and partnership with grassroots groups and non-profit organizations locally and Nationally. Jolin earned her BFA from Algoma University in 2016 and now serves as the studio technician for their Visual Arts program. She has also served on the board of directors for 180 Projects, an artist-run gallery and experimental project space. Recently, she was awarded the 2024 Strive Arts & Culture Industry Award. Additionally, Jolin is a member of the Indigenous AdvisoryCommittee for the 2SLGBTQIA+ monument, Thunderhead, set to be completed in August 2025 in Ottawa, Ontario. In 2024 she received the Strive Arts & Culture Industry Award.
Remote Viewing is a collection of curated images and videos from unprotected web-based surveillance cameras. The focus is on scenes largely void of human presence, sometimes containing things like far-away radio towers or architectural elements that mar an otherwise unoccupied landscape. This work explores themes of surveillance, identity, and connection to land, reframing the function of surveillance technology to highlight moments of vulnerability and intimacy. By featuring these otherwise inaccessible or unnoticed views, the project challenges traditional notions of territory and the emotional and intellectual spaces they occupy.
Khalil Talhaoui is a Moroccan-French artist and PhD candidate in Security, Conflicts, and Human Rights at the University of Exeter researching "Blackmail, Framing, and Technological Practices" in the Palestinian context. Khalil's research aims to highlight the continuous use of blackmail in settler colonies as a technique of control. His research and art practice sits at the nexus of settler-colonial and critical security studies and seeks to use investigative aesthetics (visuality and visualization) as a means to produce knowledge.
Ariel's illegal settlements on the hill are almost entirely walled from Salfit, a Palestinian village. Taken from a commercial flight. Iphone 13. 21/11/22.
Dr. Stéfy McKnight (they/them/iel) is a white settler, non-binary artist-scholar based in Katarokwi-Kingston, on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory. They are Director of PROTOHYVE: Centre for Innovative Research-Creation in so called Canada, and surveillART: Laboratory for Disruptive Exhibitionism at Carleton University on the unceded territories of the Algonquin nation. Stéfy’s research examines research-creation and "disruptive exhibitionism" as a methodology for knowledge production and fact-based storytelling in so called Canada. Their research interests are broad and look at surveillance as contemporary colonialism in North America; queer and femme representation in digital and virtual spaces; 2SLGBTQIA+ activism; technology and surveillance in rural communities, and art as function-creep. Their scholarly work takes the form of performance, multi-media interventions, online curatorial projects, 3D printing, installation, video, and live streaming. Stéfy’s research-creation has been exhibited at the Stratford Gallery (Stratford); Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre (Kingston); Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts (Kingston); White Water Gallery (North Bay) and others. Stéfy is an Assistant Professor at Carleton University in the Bachelor of Media Production and Design.
hunting for prey looks at the tangled histories between land ownership, private property, settler colonialism, and surveillance in Northern Ontario. Hunting cameras are normally used to document and capture animal presence on land – particularly as a way of tracking animals for hunting. These cameras are being increasingly used to protect private property from human trespassers. As a white-settler who will inherit family property in Northern Ontario, I am using hunting cameras to critically reflect on my family’s settler history and our complicity in settler colonialism, particularly in the displacement of Indigenous peoples through colonial ideations of land and private property. Since the 1930s, my family has adapted new ways of monitoring and bordering our property. My grandfather and father have adapted newer urban influenced ways of monitoring space and place to include CCTV cameras, sensors, and infrared cameras, and particularly hunting cameras. hunting for prey demonstrates the abilities of hunting cameras, particularly using it to live stream and capture gallery-visiting interlopers. Inspired by landowners’ usage of the technology in rural communities in Northern Ontario, hunting for prey provides audience members with the opportunity to engage with the surveyor, be critical of its colonial histories, and the conditions of the technology.
This digital archival of the watching territory exhibition was created by Nadja Radakovic, Connor Eales, Zedong Lin, Tristan Yelle, and Elisha Coté, students in the 2024–2025 Capstone for the Media Production and Design Program.
watching territory is funded by the Carleton University Research Achievement Award.