Words are Weapons

Justin Langlois

Words are Weapons

February 16, 2021 - June 15, 2021

Words are Weapons began in response to Canada’s Opioid Crisis, and the language enacted in the early 1990s war on drugs. The outcome of which was a political campaign that criminalized, instead of humanized the circumstances leading to the abuse of substances. As a result valuable resources were dedicated to policing instead of providing the necessary social support for those in need of assistance with the conditions of poverty, unemployment, low minimum wage, depression and mental health.

This exhibition aims to invite participation into the ways in which we can think about the impact of language that stigmatizes and shames. In so doing we are encouraged to consider new frameworks of care that protect the health and safety of all members within our communities. Each of these works can be taken on by the individual or the public conscience as a call to act on behalf of the common good, a term founded as a way of holding everyone accountable for the care of others in a fair and just society.

With an interest in what art can do in everyday life, Langlois’ artworks look to the community to develop collaborative models as tools for gathering, learning, and making space for dialogue and affirmative action.

This exhibition was guest curated by Derrick Chang

Image credit: ‘Live and Let Live’ by Justin Langlois

Click here to view the exhibition online!

With Generous Support of:

Supported by:

About The Artist

Justin Langlois is an artist, educator, and organizer. His practice explores collaborative structures, critical pedagogy, and infrastructural frameworks as tools for gathering, learning, and making. His work has been presented at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Conflux New York, Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Creative Time Summit (Venice Biennale), Open Engagement (Pittsburgh), CAFKA (Kitchener), Art Souterrain (Montreal), Art Moves (Poland), Manif D’art Biennial (Quebec City), along with galleries and artist-run centres across Canada. His writing has been published in C Magazine, Canadian Art, the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Open Engagement, Curb Magazine, Scapegoat, and books including Artistic Approaches to Cultural Mapping (Routledge) and The Everyday Practice of Public Art (Routledge). He is currently the Associate Dean of the Master of Fine Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He lives and works as an uninvited guest on unceded Coast Salish Territory in Vancouver, Canada.

Artist Statement:

I am curious about what art can do in everyday and civic life. I work through public practice to understand locality and sociality and the ways
in which we might shape it.

My artistic practice is based on emergent explorations of text-based interventions, organizational aesthetics, and socially-engaged creative
activity in public spaces. My works aims to insert alternative and often collectively experienced counter-narratives, dialogues, and collaborative possibilities into everyday spaces and situations. I work with text to open up new encounters with public spaces. I believe text creates both an invitation and a proposition, framing and fostering our experiences of spaces.

Materially, I deploy vernacular design elements through text-based installations, participatory posters, small distributable artist-multiples, and publications to intervene into the banal spaces of official communications, advertisements, municipal signage, and civic dialogue.

For Words are Weapons, I have created a new series of text works that explore the language of drug-use policy and legislation, harm reduction and stigmatization, and the moral, ethical, and social frameworks we invoke around this urgent issue.