Whippersnapper Gallery

☀️📚 SUMMER OPEN LIBRARY 📚☀️
a space for collective work, study, and conversation

Tuesday evenings
drop in 6-9PM
July 7, 14, 21, 28, August 4

Join us for drop-in hours at Whippersnapper this summer to read and chat about the relationship between art and labour, cultural work and community organizing, collective space-making and neighbourhood life. We’re interested in forms of struggle and coalition against displacement in Kensington and Chinatown specifically, while inspired by artists’ experiments in building autonomous infrastructure around the world. We will have zines, pamphlets, books, articles, and supplies to write or draw with.

Please DM us if you have printed materials you’d like to donate or lend to our collective library! Photocopied flyers, workshop handouts, teach-in reading lists, out-of-print movement journals, leftover wheatpasting posters, etc. — with a DIY ethos, and in the spirit of moving cultural work from the gallery into the real world, we want to see it all!

We will provide coffee, tea, water, stretch breaks, and light snacks for morale. Feel free to bring more snacks or drinks to share 🥟🍵

**swipe through for some examples of what we’re reading**

🎬 BlockStar Collective by Nala Haileselassie
✨ A 2026–27 PEERS Public Project ✨

“How can we learn from each other’s homes, families and blocks?”

BlockStar Collective is a collaborative film workshop series (July/August 2026) inviting youth ages 14–18 from Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods to experiment with filmmaking through radical film education, hands-on production workshops, and the creation of a collective short film.

Through storytelling, collaboration, and filmmaking, participants will reflect on:
📍 What stories live inside our apartment buildings, plazas, parks, and neighbourhoods?
📍 How do our homes, families, and communities shape the way we see the world?
📍 What can we learn from each other’s blocks, memories, and everyday environments?

Led by Toronto-based artist, researcher, and curator Nala Haileselassie, BlockStar Collective offers an experimental and collaborative space for youth to create, connect, and share perspectives through film.

Participant Criteria
🔹 Open to youth ages 14–18 based in Toronto priority neighbourhoods
🔹 All levels of arts and filmmaking experience welcome
🔹 Priority given to Indigenous, Black, racialized, Deaf, Mad, Disabled, and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, and other equity-deserving communities
🔹 $500 honorarium provided for participation
🔹 Transit fare, materials, and meals provided
🔹 Additional screening and panel fees may be available pending funding
🔹 Must be available to attend all in-person sessions

🗓️ Apply by June 29, 2026: www.whippersnapper.ca/peers, or at the link in our bio!

BlockStar Collective is part of PEERS Public Projects, produced by Whippersnapper Gallery.

Poster designed by Moe Pramanick

🙏 With gratitude to for supporting this work.

📣 Another Way by Wend Yasen
✨ A 2026–27 PEERS Public Project ✨

“Poetry is…a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” — Audre Lorde

Another Way is an interdisciplinary workshop series (July/August 2026) inviting multilingual participants ages 18–35 from the Greater Hamilton Area to explore storytelling practices beyond fluency. Through writing prompts, group conversation and performance, sound, and visual experimentation, participants will create poetic scores — creative instructions, gestures, prompts, and notations that guide artistic expression.

Together, participants will reflect on:
📍 What does poetry teach us about noticing and living?
📍 How can storytelling exist beyond fluency or formal language?
📍 In what inter and multidisciplinary ways can we create a score?

Led by Hamilton-based writer, artist, and performer Wend Yasen and multidisciplinary storyteller, poet and musician Aliyah Aziz, Another Way offers a collaborative space to create, connect, and explore language through alternative forms of storytelling.

Participant Criteria
🔹 Open to bilingual and multilingual participants ages 18–35 based in the Greater Hamilton Area
🔹 All arts and writing experience levels welcome
🔹 Honoraria, materials, transit fare, and meals provided
🔹 Additional artist fee for exhibition participation
🔹 Must be available to attend all in-person sessions

🗓️ Apply by June 29, 2026: www.whippersnapper.ca/peers, or at the link in our bio!

Poster designed by Moe Pramanick

🙏 With gratitude to for supporting this work.

Four People Sitting Around a Square Table

by Chanel Vinet
storefront exhibition viewable 24/7

A dedication to the special qualities of memory, connection, and placekeeping. This room is an exploration of reciprocity, of curiosity, and preservation. It is a faint outward expression of the inward experience – a glimpse. Using visual non-clarity to embrace opacity and reticence. A symbol of leisure as a form of resistance and of spatial agency. To anchor and sustain, over time, our personal and collective memories of place, of belonging, of warmth.

To be found
by those who want to look,
and pause,
with curiosity,
and care.

whippersnapper gallery, 594b dundas street w.
opening reception: march 14 2026, 6-8PM
exhibition dates: march 10 - april 20
close up viewing by appointment on thursdays and fridays

design by

🌸 FIELD RESEARCH GALLERY HOURS 🌸
Fridays 3-7pm from January 30 - Feb 20
594b Dundas St W

Storefront exhibition viewable 24/7

Come visit Field Research, one of our three 2025-2026 PEERS projects, an exhibition emerging from of a series of multidisciplinary workshops inviting South Asian youth to explore their families’ migration stories.

By Moe Pramanick
With collaborating artists Safa Patel, Abina Sathiya, Alisha Ahmed, Rania Qureshi, Kanniga Varatharajah

Process photos by Moe Pramanick

We’re delighted to welcome a new co-directorship, collaborative duo: Anna Malla, and Jody Chan to work with the board of directors at whippersnapper gallery in its next phase as a small but mighty, teeny-tiny, community driven, *much more than its physical space* storefront window in Kensington/Chinatown/Alexandra Park.

We’re excited to see whip grow under their leadership, deepening in artistic vision, community organizing, rooting in the neighborhood, and continuing to tend to the relationships we’ve built with emerging artists, arts workers, and long term programs over the years. Whippernapper is a space for emerging practitioners to experiment, take risks, and consider their art and work within a material and political landscape.

Anna Malla is a community organizer and educator, arts administrator, and performing artist with two decades’ experience working at the intersections of artistic and political community-building spaces. Anna looks forward to working closely with her co-director Jody Chan, the Board of Directors, and the broader Whip community to continue the incredible legacy of the outgoing directors, and to further root Whippersnapper in the neighbourhood and city that it holds space within, in all of its contradictions and complexity.

Jody Chan is a poet, performing artist, arts educator, care worker, and community organizer. Jody’s practice as an artist and arts administrator is rooted in disability justice, abolitionist, and anti-imperialist lineages, having found political homes over the years in groups like the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, Toronto/Tkaronto Mutual Aid, Toronto Street Medics, and No Arms In The Arts. Jody is honoured to take on this role with their co-director Anna, and so grateful to get to learn from - and make beautiful things with - outgoing directors Marina and Raven, the Board, the wider Whip ecosystem, and the people and neighbourhoods and movements that continue fighting to make this city livable and real, despite all its violences.

Check out our about page on our website to learn more about Anna and Jody’s practices! https://whippersnapper.ca/about

Join us for the opening reception of Field Research on Friday, December 5th at Whippersnapper Gallery!

By Moe Pramanick

Collaborating Artists:
Safa Patel
Abina Sathiya
Alisha Ahmed
Rania Qureshi
Kanniga Varatharajah

Field Research explores dialogue, memory and labour using audio archiving and textile explorations. The exhibition emerges from a workshop series in which South Asian youth were invited to unearth and preserve their families’ migration stories.

whippersnapper gallery, 594b dundas street w.
opening reception: dec 5, 2025 — 6-8pm
exhibition dates: dec 5 - jan 23, 2026
gallery hours: fridays — 3-7pm, storefront exhibition — 24/7
note: the gallery will be closed for winter holidays from dec 8 - jan 2, 2026



Design by Moe Pramanick
Logo by Kianna Mkhonza

Join us for an artist talk with Anélia Victor and Fatin Ishraq this Wednesday, Sept 10 at Arcadia Art Gallery. 🌱

Arcadia Art Gallery: 680 Queens Quay West
Time: 6:30-8pm

Friday, September 12 is also the last day to see Solidarity Seeds. Come see this incredible exhibition before it closes!
Gallery hours are 1-5pm.

20th Birthday Party
Thursday September 18th, 6-8pm

For the last two decades, our teeny-tiny storefront gallery has brought together emerging artists, cultural workers, and community members to experiment, connect and build. As we’ve always believed, the underdog does not survive in isolation—and neither do we.

On our birthday, come explore our newly-renovated underground community space by .studios, made possible by . Enjoy local snacks as we celebrate this small but mighty Toronto institution.

DJ Slowbaker 
DJ Krish

Free event | $10 cash donation encouraged to continue to support emerging artists and arts workers

Unfortunately the gallery is not wheelchair accessible and the basement and bathroom is down one flight of stairs. Masks will be available on-site.

Poster designed by Kianna Mkhonza

Join us for the opening reception of Griefs & Glimmers on Friday, September 5th at Whippersnapper Gallery!

By Harmeet Rehal

Collaborating Artists: 
Cleopatria Peterson
Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud
Tracey Thompson
Miles Obilo
Zephyr McKenna

Griefs & Glimmers is an exhibition emerging from a workshop series bringing together high-risk, COVID-aware 2SQTBIPOC artist-organizers to reflect on five years of pandemic care work, harm reduction, and the legacies of Disability Justice.

whippersnapper gallery, 594b dundas street w.
opening reception: sep 5, 2025 — 6-8pm
exhibition dates: sep 5 - oct 5, 2025
gallery hours: fridays — 3-7pm, storefront exhibition — 24/7



Design by Noor Khan
Logo by Kianna Mkhonza