Julianna D’Intino’s Connecting Rods: A Survey of Industry in the Niagara Region, 2015 – 2022 was on display at Mahtay Café & Lounge in their main space in the Fall of 2022.
This was the first in a series of curated exhibitions of Niagara based artists, that I’ve put together to show in the downtown of St. Catharines, beginning in the Fall of 2022 and coming to a close in the Spring of 2023.
Connecting Rods, to cite the words of the artist, “is but one personal case study in the myriad of lost industry of the Niagara Region.”
Much more about this body of work can be seen here. D’Intino offers a considered essay about the ideas at play here, that are as personal for her and her family as they are also a place to stand and examine larger issues in not just St. Catharines, but the wider Niagara region.
I also offered some thoughts about this fine body of work for curated., which can be read here.
This exhibition was exceptionally relevant as it was on display during a recent civic election where the fate of the old GM site was a topic of concern, and the legacy of that time – both in terms of the physical site but also the people who worked there, and the larger social and economic echoes – still resonates.
In many ways Connecting Rods is as much history as it is art. It was in many ways an ideal body of work – especially by an emerging artist who is reflecting the world and region she lives within – to being this series of curated exhibitions.
I’m sharing a number of images of the exhibition below, but encourage you to visit D’Intino’s site for more and for her writing on this work.
