It’s Chemical, But it’s Harmless

Kimberly Realegeno


It’s Chemical, But It’s Harmless, is a revelation of the exploitation of migrant workers in Canada and how COVID-19 has exposed systemic inequality within the agriculture industry. The work is a reaction to the consciousnessof the exploitation of migrants within institutions such as Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and the death of migrant workers due to COVID-19, such as Juan Lopez Chaparro, died after becoming ill in London, Ontario. I use layers of glitches and datamoshing to form a digital protest to disrupt images as a method of interrupting inequality within the supply chain of Canadian produce. Datamoshing can expose digital control and the capacity to exploit the vulnerabilities of glitching an image. The visual protest draws attention to the marketing and consumption of vulnerable migrant labour. 

You can see more of Kimberly’s work at @kimrealge on Instagram.