a sliver is a seed presents major new sculptural commissions alongside collaborative works developed over the past two years by Boring Earth, an artist collective concerned with cultivating more-than-human mutualisms and relations among living environments. Convened by artists Patrick Cruz and Laila Fox, Boring Earth gathers material and immaterial beings into a practice that traces thresholds of intimacy between what is seen and sensed, conjuring elemental ontologies that gesture toward alternative worldings. 

For a sliver is a seed, Boring Earth refigures the pipeline as a portal between possible socio-ecologies: those shaped by extractivism and uneven consumption, and those grounded in collective, spiritual, and more-than-human practices of life-making. The exhibition brings together material compositions emerging from a yearlong reciprocal exchange between the territories of the Tagbanua Tandulanen peoples—colonially known as El Nido; the territories of Mazina’iga-ziibing Misi-zaagiwininiwag (Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation), the Chippewa, and other ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᒃ (Anishinaabeg) peoples, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples—colonially known as Toronto; and the territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm, Sḵwxw̱ú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ nations—colonially known as Vancouver.

Leading up to and throughout the exhibition, Boring Earth will undertake a research and production residency that approaches Or Gallery as a transitory site of ongoing formation, experimentation, and exchange. 

In partnership with x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ Communal Garden and 221A, Or Gallery will present a series of public programs and community outreach events that expand, activate, and transform the conceptual territory of the exhibition and its themes.