At CAMH, we know that recovery takes many forms. Clinical care is essential, but healing also happens through creativity, connection, and the simple act of making space for one another. That’s the heart of Workman Arts, an arts organization founded at CAMH more than 35 years ago and still housed at our Queen Street site today. Their work shows us that art is not just expression; it can be therapy, community, and a pathway to resilience.
This year’s Being Scene curated exhibition, Tending to What Remains, brings that vision to life. Curated by Manar Abo Touk, the show reimagines the gallery as a kind of living garden, or an “ecosystem of care”, where ordinary materials like herbs, cotton, hair, seed paper, and sound become vessels for memory, grief, and renewal.
Manar has reflected on how the land itself survives harm: “The land takes care of us, so how do we take care of it and ourselves with it?” That reciprocity runs throughout the exhibition. In one installation, visitors are invited to take a piece of seed paper and plant it, a literal act of tending that folds the gallery into life beyond its walls. “The idea of recovery doesn’t end,” she explains. “It’s an ongoing process. The magic of artists is that they can walk you through it, and they can help you through it, in the way they’ve helped themselves.”
There’s a softness to the show, what Manar calls “sitting in tenderness”, that asks visitors to pause, notice, and consider how they might carry that softness back into their own lives. The exhibition suggests that healing is not something we do alone, but something we practice together, with each other and with the environments that sustain us.
In that spirit, Tending to What Remains is a reminder that recovery is ongoing, collective, and deeply human. And it’s a beautiful example of how Workman Arts, within the CAMH community, continues to nurture healing through art.
Being Scene 2025 — Tending to What Remains runs at 32 Lisgar St until October 4th. Find the full details here.
Photo credits: Henry Chan
