Mercer Union presents 45th Parallel, a solo show by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, in collaboration with the Toronto Biennial of Art from March 26 to June 4, 2022. The exhibition features the Turner Prize-winning artist’s first major commission in Canada, a video set at the Canada-U.S. border, which inspired the title of the show. 45th Parallel reflects on how the permeability of borders and the impermeability of laws implicate people and cultures — at times with fatal consequences.
The threshold of national borders represents so much. These are jurisdictions politically defined as essential components to the formation of sovereign states — but in their regulation of movement, they’re also richly layered, complex sites of negotiation. Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work sheds light on these complexities, creating conditions that allow us to see and hear stories that are distinct from how we might typically perceive them. This is an ongoing inquiry for the programs at Mercer Union; we have been working with artists whose projects share a critical understanding that narratives have the power to draw lines in the sands of history, the imagination, and our collective ability to figure the future.
— Julia Paoli, director of Mercer Union and the exhibition’s co-curator alongside the biennial’s Tairone Bastien
video installation including a single-channel video, and two hand-painted theatrical backdrops (cotton muslin, casein, acrylic urethane, corn husk size, pigment), video: 15 min, backdrops: 609 × 365 cm, each
45th Parallel was filmed on-site at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a unique structure situated on the border between Quebec and Vermont. Built in 1904 under the patronage of the local Haskell family, the building was designed as a symbol of unity between Canada and the U.S. In 2017, following the Trump Administration’s executive order banning travel to the U.S. by nationals from several countries, including seven Muslim majority nations, the library became the temporary and unlikely site of family reunions. Since the pandemic, it has been closed to out-of-town visitors entirely. Set in this geographical and political gray zone, the video tells the story of Hernández v. Mesa, a case centred on the fatal cross-border shooting of an unarmed 15year-old Mexican citizen by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in 2010. When the case reached the Supreme Court in 2019, the Department of Justice intervened to claim that although the border guard’s firearm was discharged on U.S. soil, Mesa could not be prosecuted in the States because Hernández was killed in Mexico. Citing concerns that the case could open the U.S. to vulnerabilities by setting a precedent for families of drone strike victims in Syria to seek justice, the court ruled in favour of the border agent.
Abu Hamdan’s video unfolds as a monologue in four parts performed by acclaimed Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel (A Drowning Man) inside the Opera House. Each act begins with a change in the Haskell stage’s hand-painted scenography. It starts with the original backdrop of a picturesque Venice canal; the second backdrop features the El Paso-Juárez crossing where Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca was shot; and the third depicts an aerial view of Damascus, a reference to a 1920 painting by British artist Richard Carline. The changing backdrops highlight the video’s underlying question about shifting perspectives and vantage points, and will also be on view at Mercer Union.
45th Parallel is co-commissioned by Mercer Union, Toronto; Toronto Biennial of Art; Spike Island, Bristol; and Western Front, Vancouver.
The work went on to receive the Toronto Biennial of Art’s 2022 Audience Prize.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid