Artists, cultural workers, museum patrons and community members demand MOCA Toronto stop art-washing settler colonialism!

MOCA Toronto’s latest Augmented Reality exhibition, Seeing the Invisible, is presented in partnership with the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens with the support of the Jerusalem Foundation.

Seeing the Invisible is a major international exhibition initiated and organized by the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens. Located in the heart of occupied Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens and the Jerusalem Foundation are international organizations that receive funding from the Israeli-apartheid state as well as through donations from Zionist organizations.

Recent past donors to the the Jerusalem Foundation include Check Point and Intel Israel, tech-security companies with links to the Israeli Occupation Forces’ lethal activities at borders, checkpoints, on the streets and in Palestinian homes.

MOCA Toronto claims to “recognize the importance of reflecting on the continued impacts of colonization” and to “honour… our collective responsibility to protect and nurture the land and recognize Indigenous voices throughout the Museum’s programming”. Through this partnership, MOCA Toronto is complicit in art-washing ongoing settler colonialism.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) states: “Israel overtly uses culture as a form of propaganda to justify its regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people.” As people part of communities that MOCA Toronto claims to serve, we urge MOCA to end this complicity and stand firmly against settler colonialism everywhere.

Use our template to write a letter extending your solidarity to the Palestinian struggle for liberation, decolonization, and the right to return for all exiled and forcibly displaced Palestinian refugees from Tkaronto/Toronto to Shu’fat refugee camp in Jerusalem.

“The settler colony has only been able to survive by continuing to kill, imprison, torture, dispossess, demolish, exile and erase Palestinian life. It has also only been able to thrive through international support, complicity and silence.” -Anonymous artist

For more information about the next steps of this campaign, follow @StopArtwashing on Instagram.