In conjunction with the exhibition Vera Frenkel: Ways of Telling, Gendai Gallery will introduce their most recent publication through a selection of readings, which will take place around Frenkel’s immerse installation “…from the Transit Bar”. The publication titled Model Minority, is an assemblage of the readings, articles, ephemera, and archives discovered and created from a year-long programming series issued under the same name.

The programme Model Minority, contests the self-pretence of a unified Canada built on a foundation of diversity and passive coexistence. Instead, Gendai investigates a more radical version of a multicultural society through the lens of the “model minority”, a figure that functions to stratify and reify cultural hierarchy while strengthening the template of supremacy relating to state/economic – colonial – power constructs. Model minority is a problematic concept that intersects deep within the ambiguity of the existing condition of multiculturalism in Canada.

Within the year, the scope of Model Minority involved research, workshops, screenings, and commissioned series that dissected the contradictory concept of model minority. Aptly, the publication has been conceptualized as a ‘kit’ to be used as a functional resource for any pertinent, future programs or discussions. “…from the Transit Bar” offers an ideal venue to preview the print-based iteration of Gendai’s nomadic, process-based public platform for the production of new dialogue, alliances and creative research.