Arturo Herrera

Arturo Herrera (Windsor, ON) is an artist working with notions of identity, migration, and food. Herrera’s most recent project is The Daily Bread, with the participation of artists Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, to develop a community-engaged art project with migrant workers in Leamington, Ontario. His performance series: The Tortilla Workshop, has been presented at VideoFag (Toronto) and Broken City Lab (Windsor). Herrera’s work has been shown in many national and international festivals including STRUTT (St Catharines, 2012), Nuit Blanche (Toronto, 2012), CONTACT Photography (Toronto, 2011), and Winnetka Chicago Modernism Show (Chicago, 2005).

Herrera was born in Honduras, Central America and currently lives in Windsor, Ontario. He holds a BFA from the University of Windsor and a Photography degree from the New York School of Photography. His work can be seen this summer in theSHOW.13 at Cambridge Galleries in Cambridge, Ontario.

NS Residency: July – August 2014

Each year, seasonal labourers arrive in Essex County to work in Leamington’s greenhouses and farms. They come from many regions including: Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, and others. Many of the workers practice traditional methods of food preparation and cooking while living and working in Ontario. In the summer months, there are several festivals and community events, where traditional Latino and Caribbean dishes are tasted and enjoyed through contests, celebrations, and music festivals.

For Neighbourhood Spaces, a recipe card exchange will be developed with hand written recipe cards created by migrant workers in Leamington. Building on his current project, Daily Bread, Herrera will be an artist-in-residence with the Migrant Workers Community Program, Leamington, ON. Herrera will convert his truck into a ‘mobile recipe collection and exchange unit’, visiting various locations of significance to the migrant worker community including churches, supermarkets, tiendas and restaurants. Each recipe card will be translated to French and English, and distributed and/or exchanged within Leamington and beyond.